Water Soluble Cationic Poly(3,4-Ethylenedioxythiophene) PEDOT-N as a Versatile Conducting Polymer for Bioelectronics

Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) is the most popular conducting polymer in the emerging field of bioelectronics. Besides its excellent properties and commercial availability, its success is due to the aqueous processability of its anionically stabilized solutions or dispersions. In this work, a water soluble version of PEDOT is shown, which is cationically stabilized. This work reports the chemical oxidative (co)polymerization of EDOT-ammonium derivative leading to PEDOT-N (co)polymers. PEDOT-N shows the typical features of PEDOT such as UV absorbance, bipolaron band, electrical conductivity, electrochemical behavior, and film formation ability. Furthermore, the PEDOT-N films show good biocompatibility in the presence of the human embryonic kidney-293 cell line. The water solubility of PEDOT-N and its cationic nature allows its processability in the form of thin films obtained by the layer-by-layer technique or as conducting hydrogels.