Published February 10, 2023 | Supplemental Material + Published
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Flexible biomimetic block copolymer composite for temperature and long-wave infrared sensing

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Abstract

Biological compounds often provide clues to advance material designs. Replicating their molecular structure and functional motifs in artificial materials offers a blueprint for unprecedented functionalities. Here, we report a flexible biomimetic thermal sensing (BTS) polymer that is designed to emulate the ion transport dynamics of a plant cell wall component, pectin. Using a simple yet versatile synthetic procedure, we engineer the physicochemical properties of the polymer by inserting elastic fragments in a block copolymer architecture, making it flexible and stretchable. The thermal response of our flexible polymer outperforms current state-of-the-art temperature sensing materials, including vanadium oxide, by up to two orders of magnitude. Thermal sensors fabricated from these composites exhibit a sensitivity that exceeds 10 mK and operate stably between 15° and 55°C, even under repeated mechanical deformations. We demonstrate the use of our flexible BTS polymer in two-dimensional arrays for spatiotemporal temperature mapping and broadband infrared photodetection.

Additional Information

© 2023 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). We acknowledge the critical support and infrastructure provided for this work by The Kavli Nanoscience Institute at Caltech. We would like to thank C. Heo and the Process Technology Group at SAIT for technical support during IR device fabrication; S. Han, M. S. Jang, and B. Min at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) for advice on the IR measurements; and H. B. Moon, Y. H. Jang, and N. Kim at Nextron Corp. for use of the Micro Probe System. This work was supported by the Samsung Electronics SAIT, GRO Program (C.D.), and by the Schwartz/Reisman Collaborative Science Program (C.D.). Author contributions: T.H.K., Z.Z., V.C., L.W., and C.D. conceived the idea and designed the research. Z.Z., Y.S.C., and J.H.B. synthesized the block copolymer. T.H.K., Z.Z., Y.S.C., and S.K. performed the particle size analysis, NMR, GPC, ATR-FTIR, TGA-FTIR, and the titration experiments for material characterization and analyzed the data. N.J.H. provided technical support during the FTIR analysis. T.H.K. designed and fabricated the temperature sensor. T.H.K., V.C., and L.W. built the custom measurement stage for thermal characterization, conducted electrical measurements, carried out mechanical tests on the block copolymer, and analyzed the data. T.H.K., Y.S.C., Y.Y., and H.K. designed and fabricated the IR detector. T.H.K. performed the IR measurements and analyzed the data. C.D. supervised the project. T.H.K., Y.S.C., and C.D. cowrote the manuscript. All authors commented on the manuscript. Data and materials availability: All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. Competing interests: T.H.K., Z.Z., Y.S.C., V.C., L.W., and C.D. are the named inventors on the patent assigned to Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. and the California Institute of Technology regarding the biomimetic block copolymer and its application for temperature and IR sensing. Application number: US20220056188A1 (2022-02-24). Status: Pending. T.H.K., Z.Z., Y.S.C., V.C., L.W., and C.D. are the named inventors on the issued patent number US11492420B2, granted to Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and the California Institute of Technology regarding composites and IR absorbers (2022-11-08). Status: Active. V.C., C.D., and Z.Z. are the named inventors on the patent assigned to the California Institute of Technology regarding the ABA-type block copolymers for temperature sensing and flow meters. Application number: US20200353729A1 (2020-11-12). Status: Pending. V.C. and C.D. are the named inventors on the issued patent number US10345153B2, granted to the California Institute of Technology regarding gel-based thermal sensors (2019-07-09). Status: Active. C.D. is currently affiliated with Meta Reality Labs. The other authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 25, 2023