A paper was just published1 in ACS Materials Letters by our former PhD student, Marcin S. Filipiak, with Martin as one of the co-authors.
The paper describes a conductive hydrogel based on a combination of GelMA, PEDOT:PSS, and tetramethacrylated PEDOT:TOS. This material is a conductive 3D scaffold that can be used, e.g., for cell cultures. The combination of PEDOT:PSS, and TMA PEDOT:TOS within the hydrogel overcomes an issue that PEDOT:PSS, which is the most commonly used conductive polymer in these applications, tends to aggregate. The addition of the third component significantly shortens the time needed for homogenisation of the mixture. It also remarkably increases the cytocompatibility of the conductive hydrogel. Cells are happier in the ternary composite than in the GelMA-PEDOT:PSS binary mixture. The new hydrogel also shows very promising properties when used to make an organic electrochemical transistor. Hopefully, this conductive hydrogel network, which is compatible with cell growth, can find use in bioelectronics, such as sensors, neural interfaces, and tissue engineering, where integration of electrical signalling with cell cultures is necessary.
This work has been underway for a long time. It started a few years ago, when a PhD student from Lithuania, Viktorija visited IChF. At the time, Marcin was a postdoc at our Institute within the EU-supported PD2PI project. The research was finalised at Marcin’s new place of work, CEZAMAT, where his new PhD-student İpek performed the final analyses requested by the reviewers.2. Martin’s role in this paper was mostly as an adviser on the electrochemical measurements and performing SEM imaging and analysis.
- V. Reinikovaite, İ. Sarıer, M. Jönsson-Niedziółka, N. Celikkin, M. Costantini, M. S. Filipiak
Enhancing Conductivity in 3D Organic Electrochemical Transistors with PEDOT–Tetramethacrylate Integration, ACS Mater. Lett. 8, 3, 750–756 (2026). (link) - This is an example of the reviewers giving very constructive critique and significantly improving the paper.
