Poly-tetramethacrylate or PEDOT-TMA is a p-type conducting polymer based on 3,4-ethylenedioxylthiophene or the EDOT monomer

Monomer

A monomer is an atom or a small molecule that may bind chemically to other monomers to form a polymer; the term "monomeric protein" may also be used to describe one of the proteins making up a multiprotein complex...

. It is a modification of the PEDOT

Pedot

Pedot is the eleventh album of the Finnish rock band CMX. "Pedot" means "Beasts" in Finnish.The opening track "Eteläisen tähtitaivaan kartoitus" breaks a CMX tradition of starting their albums with powerful rock songs. It is a minimalistic piano-based ballad with no drums...

 structure. Advantages of this polymer relative to PEDOT (or PEDOT:PSS

PEDOT:PSS

PEDOT:PSS or Poly poly is a polymer mixture of two ionomers. One component in this mixture is made up of sodium polystyrene sulfonate which is a sulfonated polystyrene. Part of the sulfonyl groups are deprotonated and carry a negative charge...

) are that it is dispersible in organic solvents, and it is non-corrosive. PEDOT-TMA was developed under a contract with the National Science Foundation

National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...

, and it was first announced publicly on April 12, 2004 . The trade name for PEDOT-TMA is Oligotron. PEDOT-TMA was featured in an article entitled "Next Stretch for Plastic Electronics" that appeared in Scientific American

Scientific American

Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...

 in 2004 . It was also featured in an article entitled "Light, and magic" in the Materials Science

Materials science

Materials science is an interdisciplinary field applying the properties of matter to various areas of science and engineering. This scientific field investigates the relationship between the structure of materials at atomic or molecular scales and their macroscopic properties. It incorporates...

 section of The Economist

The Economist

The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...

 .
The U.S. Patent office issued a patent protecting PEDOT-TMA on April 22, 2008 .

PEDOT-TMA differs from the parent polymer PEDOT in that it is capped on both ends of the polymer. This limits the chain-length of the polymer, making it more soluble in organic solvents than PEDOT. The methacrylate groups on the two end-caps allow further chemistry to occur such as cross-linking to other polymers or materials.

Application Overview

Several devices and materials have been described in both journals and the patent literature that use PEDOT-TMA as a critical component. In this section, a brief overview of these inventions is given.

• Patternable OLED's: In a study by researchers at General Electric
  General Electric
  General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
  
  , PEDOT-TMA was used in the hole injection layer in a series of OLED devices. They have also filed a patent application to protect this invention .

• Ion Selective Membranes: PEDOT-TMA was used as a key ingredient in ion selective membrane
  Ion selective electrode
  An ion-selective electrode , also known as a specific ion electrode , is a transducer that converts the activity of a specific ion dissolved in a solution into an electrical potential, which can be measured by a voltmeter or pH meter. The voltage is theoretically dependent on the logarithm of the...
  
  s .

• Dye Sensitized Solar Cell: PEDOT-TMA was used in the construction of an effective Dye-sensitized solar cell .

• Flexible Touch Screens: PEDOT-TMA was used in the construction of electrodes for flexible touch screens as described in a patent application by the Honeywell Corporation .

• Energy Storage and Conversion Devices: Synkera Technologies, Inc. filed a patent application detailing a variety of energy storage and conversion devices that use PEDOT-TMA in their construction .

• Glucose Sensor: A glucose sensor was prepared by Gymama Slaughter of Virginia State University .

• Carbon Nanotube Composites: Researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory
  Los Alamos National Laboratory
  Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security , located in Los Alamos, New Mexico...
  
  used PEDOT-TMA to prepare composites with carbon nanotubes. These composites form highly aligned arrays of the nanotubes, and exhibit high conductivity at room temperature (25.0 S/cm).