Conjugated Polymers for Assessing and Controlling Biological Functions

Abstract

The field of organic bioelectronics is advancing rapidly in the development of materials and devices to precisely monitor and control biological signals. Electronics and biology can interact on multiple levels: organs, complex tissues, cells, cell membranes, proteins, and even small molecules. Compared to traditional electronic materials like metals and inorganic semiconductors, conjugated polymers (CPs) have several key advantages for biological interactions; tunable physiochemical properties, adjustable form factors, and mixed conductivity (ionic and electronic). This review focuses on the use of CPs in five biologically oriented research topics: electrophysiology, tissue engineering, drug release, biosensing, and molecular bioelectronics. In electrophysiology, implantable devices with CP coating or CPonly electrodes are showing improvements in signal performance and tissue interfaces. CPbased scaffolds supply highly favorable static or even dynamic interfaces for tissue engineering.CPs also allow for delivery of drugs through a variety of mechanisms and form factors. For biosensing, CPs offer new possibilities to incorporate biological sensing elements in a conducting matrix. Molecular bioelectronics is today used to incorporate (opto)electronic functions in living tissue. Under each topic, limits of the utility of CPs are discussed and, overall, the review highlights the major challenges towards implementation of CPs and their devices to real-world applications.Received: ((will be filled in by the editorial staff))Revised: ((will be filled in by the editorial staff))

Stability of PEDOT:PSS‐Coated Gold Electrodes in Cell Culture Conditions

“…Despite these slight differences, none of these visible changes had influenced the electrical properties. Aside from electrode 3, which showed delamination of the first PEDOT:PSS layer, the unstable (4,6,9) and nonfunctional (10) electrodes did not show any apparent signs of material damage, which supports our conclusions that nonfunctional electrodes were mostly due to connection issues ( Figure S4, Supporting Information).…”

“…For comparison, images of an electrode directly after fabrication were taken as well. Forty-six out of the 64 electrodes (>70%) showed no visible signs of degradation, and these include the impedance-fluctuating electrodes (4,6,9). The PEDOT:PSS material was intact and covered the entire electrode area.…”

MOF@PEDOT Composite Films for Impedimetric Pesticide Sensors

“…It is also known that small dopant molecules can leach from the CP film and being gradually replaced by small ions from the electrolyte support solutions and additionally, the CP backbone can undergo redox reactions which will affect conductivity. [74] All the above-mentioned processes and effects can be used to rationalize the detected increase on the resistive component of the electrical impedance in the PEDOT film upon exposure to KCl, as show in Figure 2C,D.…”

Biological Interfaces, Modulation, and Sensing with Inorganic Nano‐Bioelectronic Materials

“…Inorganic devices in this context are typically made from semiconductor or metal materials, while organic ones are primarily carbon‐based and may be derived from biological sources. Organic devices have shown great promise as bioelectronics, and we refer the reader to a small selection of the numerous excellent articles regarding nanodiamonds, [ 22–26 ] carbon nanotubes, [ 27–29 ] and graphene‐based materials [ 15,30,31 ] as well as conjugated polymers [ 32 ] and biologically‐derived nanomaterials. [ 33,34 ]…”