Has anybody tried to make PDMS electrically conductive? Which material (metal) and methods have you tried?
In short you have to add metal nanospheres in the bulk of PDMS. Usually gold, silver and platinum are used for these types of efforts.
The quantity of nanospheres you need to put can be calculated by what is known as "percolation theory". You should read about it and understand how the spheres can create the pathway to allow conductivity in PDMS (or any other polymer).
Have in mind that such efforts (adding metal spheres) can change several properties of the material itself, since after adding metalic spheres inside PDMS you have a composite material and not a polymer any more.
In short you have to add metal nanospheres in the bulk of PDMS. Usually gold, silver and platinum are used for these types of efforts.
The quantity of nanospheres you need to put can be calculated by what is known as "percolation theory". You should read about it and understand how the spheres can create the pathway to allow conductivity in PDMS (or any other polymer).
Have in mind that such efforts (adding metal spheres) can change several properties of the material itself, since after adding metalic spheres inside PDMS you have a composite material and not a polymer any more.
Thank you Dimitrios, could you please advise some literature about "persolation theory" ? and what about coating of metal or sputtering? Did you try this way? Or is it "unstable" on PDMS or polymers?
Thanks very much!
Coating or sputtering a film on the surface is for creating a pathway on the top of the polymer and not doing the polymer itself conductive.
Yes of course I know it. I just wanted to know what kind of possibilities I could have, to make this polymer electrically conductive. Especially if I want to create structured cunductive areas!
If you want to make it on the surface one quite simple process for selective deposition is lift-off process.
If you only want to have a conductive surface, you may also spin coat with a PEDOT:PSS solution, which is used frequently to produce organic semiconducting devices. Especially all those flexible displays and bendable photovoltaics that have been recently assembled and mentioned in several papers use in one way or another PEDOT:PSS films, since the usual ITO is too brittle.
Another advantage is the fairly easy way to handle PEDOT:PSS.
I have seen some fabrication methods for conductive PDMS, like mixing metal powders( nano-particles ) before adding hardening to the PDMS.
In addition you can activate PDMS by oxygen plasma to bind Au sheets on the baked PDMS
PDMS/graphite stretchable electrodes for dielectric elastomer actuators
http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/proceeding.aspx?articleid=756950
I tried MWCNTs mixed with PDMS which improves conductivity significantly
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