Smartwatch, smartband, smarty ring, smart headphone, smart fitness clothing, smart socks...... You must know of these wearable smart devices, maybe even have one or two.

The development of wearable smart devices not only makes people closer to the machine, but also bring great convenience to people's lives. However, the users’ experience of hard electronic components is poor, and it even has risk of injury, so the flexible intelligent devices are the future of intelligent devices.

Conductive polymer PEDOT, combining conductivity and ductility together, makes the flexible stretchable advices possible.

An ideal material for flexible stretchable advices should be "soft" and "hard" at the same time. "Soft" points to the activity and softness of the material, while "hard" points to the crystallinity and conductivity of the material. PEDOT (poly(2,3-dihydrothieno-1,4-dioxin)) is a widely used conductive polymer material, which has caught the broad interest of scientists because of high conductivity, good stability and other excellent features.

The researchers combined PEDOT (poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)) and PSS (Poly(Styrenesulfonate)) together, then tested a series of additives. It was found that three of them were acceptable. Their commonality is high solubility in water and PEDOT:PSS, and containing acidic particles.

These additives not only soften PSS, allow the formation of space between PSS chains, improve the overall ductility, but also destroy the electrostatic interaction between PSS and PEDOT, make PEDOT enrichment in PSS frame, and maintain good connectivity. This material has good ductility and conductivity in all directions, and has high space utilization.

All in all, PEDOT(CAS 126213-51-2):PSS with ideal additives meets the requirements of wearable and skin electronic equipment, especially for the production of surface electronic equipment. In addition, this material has the potential to be produced by batch printing. It may also be applied to implantable electronic devices by further biocompatibility testing.