Tokyo Deux

12/9/2012

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     A quick trip to Tokyo for a for a SACLA conference and some sightseeing (check out the Shibuya timelapse video below the pictures!):
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PEDOT:PSS - Research on an Organic Conductive Polymer

12/9/2012

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Picture
Film of PEDOT nano crystal in PEDOT:PSS (Figure from http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ma300120g?mi=w18lz5&af=R&pageSize=20&searchText=imaging)
PEDOT:PSS is a polymer mixture containing two main components: poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) crystals encased in chains of hydrophilic poly(4-styrenesulfonate) (PSS).  As is shown in the picture at left, these two ionomers form miscelles at the nanometer scale. What does this benefit? If you make touch screens, photographic fim, capacitors, or organic photovoltaics then you may be very interested, because this polymer mix has the potential to serve as a highly conductive (>1000 S/cm @ room temperature) material in any of your applications/devices for relatively cheap. 
     Up until March of this year however, the finer details of how and why this polymer mixture was so conductive were not well understood. Researchers Takano et. al. used small angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) and wide angle x-ray scattering (WAXS) at BL40B2 of the SPring-8 research facility in Japan to probe the relationship between this polymer's structure and its conductivity. It was found that the more highly oriented and crystallized the PEDOT crystals were within the PSS shells, the more conductive the thin films were. 

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