A Facile Route Toward Continuous Wet-spinning of PEDOT: PSS Fibers with Enhanced Strength and Electroconductivity

Wet-spinning was considered as a facile and proven technique for industrial production of synthetic fibers. However, continuous spinning of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene): poly(p-styrene sulfonic acid) (PEDOT: PSS) fibers from commercial aqueous dispersion is difficult to approach in traditional coagulation bath. In this work, the metal chloride salts were added into the coagulation bath to promote the solidification of PEDOT: PSS fibers by the interaction between metal ions and PSS chains. Therefore, continuous and uniform filament over 100 m was achieved. Especially, after the dosage of lithium chloride, resultant PEDOT: PSS fibers present an enhanced breaking strength from 116±3 MPa to 185±7.5 MPa. Meanwhile, the electroconductivity shows an order of magnitude higher owing to the reduction of defects within the fibers. The optimization of coagulation bath enables the direct fabrication of continuous fibers by 1.3 wt% PEDOT: PSS aqueous dispersion exemption from the concentration treatment, which simplifies the spinning process and beneficial for the scalable preparation of fibers.