Long-Term Stability in Electronic Properties of Textile Organic Electrochemical Transistors for Integrated Applications

Abstract

Organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) have demonstrated themselves to be an efficient interface between living environments and electronic devices in bioelectronic applications. The peculiar properties of conductive polymers allow new performances that overcome the limits of conventional inorganic biosensors, exploiting the high biocompatibility coupled to the ionic interaction. Moreover, the combination with biocompatible and flexible substrates, such as textile fibers, improves the interaction with living cells and allows specific new applications in the biological environment, including real-time analysis of plants’ sap or human sweat monitoring. In these applications, a crucial issue is the lifetime of the sensor device. The durability, long-term stability, and sensitivity of OECTs were studied for two different textile functionalized fiber preparation processes: (i) adding ethylene glycol to the polymer solution, and (ii) using sulfuric acid as a post-treatment. Performance degradation was studied by analyzing the main electronic parameters of a significant number of sensors for a period of 30 days. RGB optical analysis were performed before and after the treatment of the devices. This study shows that device degradation occurs at voltages higher than 0.5 V. The sensors obtained with the sulfuric acid approach exhibit the most stable performances over time.