A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
Sustainable castor oil-derived cross-linked poly(ester-urethane) elastomeric films for stretchable transparent conductive electrodes and heaters
Authors: Laukkanen, Timo; Reddy Pulikanti, Guruprasad; Barua, Amit; Kumar, Manish; Kolpakov, Kristofer; Tirri, Teija; Sharma, Vipul
Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
Publication year: 2024
Journal: Journal of Materials Chemistry A
Journal name in source: Journal of Materials Chemistry A
Volume: 12
Issue: 47
First page : 33177
Last page: 33192
ISSN: 2050-7488
eISSN: 2050-7496
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/D4TA05338A
Web address : https://doi.org/10.1039/D4TA05338A
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/470973333
Substrates are essential for flexible and stretchable devices, requiring sustainability, stretchability, transparency, thermal stability, and chemical stability. This study introduces a sustainable cross-linked poly(castor oil-co-δ-valerolactone)cyclohexyl urethane (PCVU) substrate for flexible, stretchable transparent conducting electrodes (TCEs) based strain sensors and heaters. PCVU is synthesized as a highly transparent (>90%), stretchable (>190%), and thermally stable (∼210 °C) substrate via thermal cross-link polymerization of poly(castor oil-co-δ-valerolactone)triol and 4,4′-methylenebis(cyclohexyl isocyanate) on a glass mold. PCVU exhibits high chemical stability in various organic solvents and good degradability in acidic (pH 0, 45% degradation), alkaline (pH 14, 100% degradation), and phosphate buffer (pH 7.2, 9% degradation) aqueous solutions over 150 days. Using PCVU, we fabricated a robust, flexible, and stretchable TCE with low sheet resistance (<50 Ω sq−1). The TCE fabrication process involves applying an electrospun polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) layer as a temporary wet film leveling agent to improve the dispersion and adhesion of silver nanowires (AgNWs) on PCVU films, followed by a heat-based nano-welding technique to enhance the durability and mechanical stability of the TCE. The TCE-based strain sensor showed stable and repeatable resistance changes (ΔR/R0) under 5–15% strains, with fast response and consistent signal stability over 100 cycles at 5% strain. The flexible heater reached a maximum average temperature of ∼150 °C at 5.5 V, with rapid heating and cooling responses (15 s each). Practical applications include a strain sensor for real-time monitoring of human motion (finger, wrist, elbow, and neck flexion) and a heater used as a thermotherapy pad for the wrist and finger, demonstrating the potential of PCVU-based TCEs for wearable and medical devices.
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Funding information in the publication:
This work is supported by funding from the KONE Foundation (decision number 202012035), the Research Council of Finland (grant no. 331368), and project DURATRANS (364408, 2024–2027, under the framework of M-ERA.Net). Authors are thankful to the Materials Research Infrastructure (MARI) and Sustainable Fabrication (SusFab) at the University of Turku for infrastructure facilities. The authors acknowledge Dr Rituporn Gogoi from the Department of Materials and Mechanical Engineering and Dr Ermei Mäkilä from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Turku for their assistance with SEM analysis.