Functionalized Polythiophene Copolymers for Electronic Biomedical Devices

We continue to investigate the design, synthesis, and characterization of electrically and ionically active conjugated polythiophene copolymers for integrating a variety of biomedical devices with living tissue. This paper will describe some of our most recent results, including the development of several new monomers that can tailor the surface chemistry, adhesion, and biointegration of these materials with neural cells. Our efforts have focused on copolymers of 3,4 ethylenedioxythiophene (EDOT), functionalized variants of EDOT (including EDOT-acid and the trifunctional EPh), and dopamine (DOPA). The resulting PEDOT-based copolymers have electrical, optical, mechanical, and adhesive properties that can be precisely tailored by fine tuning the chemical composition and structure. Here we present results on EDOT-dopamine bifunctional monomers and their corresponding polymers. We discuss the design and synthesis of an EDOT-cholesterol that combines the thiophene with a biological moiety known to exhibit surface-active behaviour. We will also introduce EDOT-aldehyde and EDOT-maleimide monomers and show how they can be used as the starting point for a wide variety of functionalized monomers and polymers.