DOI: 10.1002/open.201700001
Self-Supported Polypyrrole/Polyvinylsulfate Films: Electrochemical Synthesis, Characterization, and Sensing Properties of Their Redox Reactions
V. H. Pascual
J. Schumacher
T. F. Otero
L. Valero
L. X. Martinez-Soria
Invited for this month’s cover picture is the group of Professor Toribio F. Otero at the Centre for Electrochemistry, Intelligent Materials and Devices at the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (Spain). The cover picture shows an electrochemical cell as well as three representative cyclic voltammetric responses, displaying the electrolyte potential window, the monomer oxidation–polymerization potential range, and the polymer oxidation–reduction potential window. For more details, read the full text of the Full Paper at 10.1002/open.201600139.
How would you describe to the layperson the most significant result of this study?
What is, in your opinion, an upcoming research theme likely to become one of the “hot topics” in the near future?
A new technological world of electrochemical sensorimotors mimicking biological muscles is emerging, requiring thick films of conducting polymers for their construction. Here, we present how the best conditions to generate thick films of the polypyrrole/polyvynivlsuphonate blend are determined, how the self-supported electrodes are constructed, and how their electrochemical and sensing properties are determined. The material can be applied to create sensing artificial muscles.
Development of structural and biomimetic electrochemical models and multifunctional electrochemical devices (sensing motors, sensing motor batteries, sensing smart windows, artificial chemical synapse for neuron–computer interfaces) as well as electro-chemo-conformational memories that can actuate as multipotent memories for biomimetic computers, like possible brain memory models.
Acknowledgement
What aspects of this project do you find most exciting?
This project was supported by the Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network MICACT-H2020-MSCA-ITN-2014 and by the S8neca Foundation project 19253/PI/14.
An unexplored and unparalleled technological world is emerging, in which electrochemical tools and robots replicate the intracellular matrix content of functional cells (ions water and reactive macromolecules), and their functions. Haptic muscles, dual and simultaneous sensing motors, can now be replicated by sensing artificial muscles. The electrochemical reactions of the constitutive material drive, simultaneously, the movement rate of the motor (through the flowing current) and the mechanical, thermal, or chemical sensing (through the muscle potential evolution) of the working conditions.
What new scientific questions/problems does this work raise?
If each of the film constitutive chains is a reacting molecular motor: where is the electrical double layer?; how can electrochemical models include reaction-driven volume variations and conformational energetic changes of the reacting polymeric chains?; if we can mimic haptic muscles, can artificial proprioception and artificial proprioceptive robots be developed?, could the attained results help to describe parallel biochemical functional reactions or biological functions and predict malfunctions? ChemistryOpen 2017, 6, 2
2
T 2017 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
Self-Supported Polypyrrole/Polyvinylsulfate Films: Electrochemical Synthesis, Characterization, and Sensing Properties of Their Redox Reactions
V. H. Pascual
J. Schumacher
T. F. Otero
L. Valero
L. X. Martinez-Soria
Invited for this month’s cover picture is the group of Professor Toribio F. Otero at the Centre for Electrochemistry, Intelligent Materials and Devices at the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (Spain). The cover picture shows an electrochemical cell as well as three representative cyclic voltammetric responses, displaying the electrolyte potential window, the monomer oxidation–polymerization potential range, and the polymer oxidation–reduction potential window. For more details, read the full text of the Full Paper at 10.1002/open.201600139.
How would you describe to the layperson the most significant result of this study?
What is, in your opinion, an upcoming research theme likely to become one of the “hot topics” in the near future?
A new technological world of electrochemical sensorimotors mimicking biological muscles is emerging, requiring thick films of conducting polymers for their construction. Here, we present how the best conditions to generate thick films of the polypyrrole/polyvynivlsuphonate blend are determined, how the self-supported electrodes are constructed, and how their electrochemical and sensing properties are determined. The material can be applied to create sensing artificial muscles.
Development of structural and biomimetic electrochemical models and multifunctional electrochemical devices (sensing motors, sensing motor batteries, sensing smart windows, artificial chemical synapse for neuron–computer interfaces) as well as electro-chemo-conformational memories that can actuate as multipotent memories for biomimetic computers, like possible brain memory models.
Acknowledgement
What aspects of this project do you find most exciting?
This project was supported by the Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network MICACT-H2020-MSCA-ITN-2014 and by the S8neca Foundation project 19253/PI/14.
An unexplored and unparalleled technological world is emerging, in which electrochemical tools and robots replicate the intracellular matrix content of functional cells (ions water and reactive macromolecules), and their functions. Haptic muscles, dual and simultaneous sensing motors, can now be replicated by sensing artificial muscles. The electrochemical reactions of the constitutive material drive, simultaneously, the movement rate of the motor (through the flowing current) and the mechanical, thermal, or chemical sensing (through the muscle potential evolution) of the working conditions.
What new scientific questions/problems does this work raise?
If each of the film constitutive chains is a reacting molecular motor: where is the electrical double layer?; how can electrochemical models include reaction-driven volume variations and conformational energetic changes of the reacting polymeric chains?; if we can mimic haptic muscles, can artificial proprioception and artificial proprioceptive robots be developed?, could the attained results help to describe parallel biochemical functional reactions or biological functions and predict malfunctions? ChemistryOpen 2017, 6, 2
2
T 2017 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
