Chemical Control for the Morphogenesis of Conducting Polymer Dendrites in Water

Abstract

Conducting polymer dendrite (CPD) morphogenesis is an electrochemical process that enables in materio evolving intelligence in wetware devices. During CPD morphogenesis, voltage transients drive the physical evolution of electrically conductive structures, thereby programming their filtering properties as nonlinear analog devices. Either studied as an electrochemical experiment or as neuromorphic devices, the dependence of the electrical properties of the electrogenerated structures on the chemical composition of their growth environment is still unreported. In this study, we report the existing intrication between the nature and concentration of the electrolytes, electroactive compounds and co-solvents and the electrical and the electrochemical properties of CPDs in an aqueous electrolyte. CPDs exhibit various chemical sensitivities in water: Their morphology is highly dependent on the nature of the chemical resources available in their environment. The selection of these resources therefore critically influences morphogenesis. In addition, the concentration of the different electrochemical species have varying impacts on growth dynamics, conditioning the balance between thermodynamic and kinetic control on polymer electrosynthesis. By correlating the dependencies of these evolving objects with the availability of the chemical resources in an aqueous environment, this study offers guidelines to tune the degree of evolution of electronic materials in water and highlights potential avenues for their application. Such evolving hardware is envisioned to exploit the chemical complexity of real-world environments as part of information processing technologies.