Induced Wettability Switch in Thin Films of Conductive Polymer Coatings Exhibiting Hydrophobic/Hydrophilic Interactions

The hydrophobic/hydrophilic character of some conductive polymer (CP) coatings can be switched in the function of the working conditions of these adaptive materials. We studied the influence of electrical stimuli and intrinsic physical characteristics (nature of the polymerizable core, dopants, the droplet dimension and physical properties, surface roughness, etc.) on the CP wettability. A simulation strategy was developed for determining the contact angle (CA) of a liquid droplet on a CP layer with roughness. The method was tested for new reported CP composites, but with new dopants. The results indicate that the influences on the material wettability are correlated, and in practice, modification of more than one parameter converges to a wanted behavior of the material. E.g., the CP porous film of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) + [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyricacid-methyl-ester (PCBM) changes its wettability at voltages of up to 26 V, but if doping ions are inserted and the roughness geometry is modified, the voltage decreases twice. Our multi-parametrical study points out that the polymer wettability type is driven by the voltage, but this effect is tuned differently by each internal parameter. The thin films’ effect and the dopants (in-situ and ex-situ) significantly decrease the actuation voltage. We also illustrated that the wettability type does not change for specific sets of parameters.