Novel Antimicrobial Coating on Silicone Contact Lens Using Glycidyl Methacrylate and Polyethyleneimine Based Polymers.

Contact lenses are medical devices commonly used to correct refractive errors and to maintain ocular health. Microorganisms such as bacteria that grow on the lens surface cause irritation to the eyes and can even cause loss of vision. In this paper, two different coating strategies are employed to form an efficient antimicrobial coating on contact lenses. In the first method, a presynthesized copolymer of polyethyleneimine-graft-polyethylene glycol methacrylate (PEI-PEGMA) is used and the coated lenses show antimicrobial activity (in vitro) against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria with killing efficacy >99.99% and log reduction of 5.1 and proxy host cell viability of 79%. In the second method, commercially available monomers/polymers such as glycidyl methacrylate (GMA), sulfobetaine methacrylate, and polyethyleneimine are used. A typical formulation consisting of 1% GMA shows antibacterial activity against MRSA with killing efficacy >99.99% and log reduction of 6.3. Proxy host cell viability for the coated lenses is found to be 90% indicating that the coating is nontoxic. Antibacterial coating reported here is very effective in killing gram-positive bacteria such as MRSA and S. aureus. The second method using commercially available monomers/polymers involving a simple coating procedure is also easily scalable.

Totally embedded hybrid thin films of carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires as flat homogenous flexible transparent conductors.

There is a great need for viable alternatives to today's transparent conductive film using largely indium tin oxide. We report the fabrication of a new type of flexible transparent conductive film using silver nanowires (AgNW) and single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) networks which are fully embedded in a UV curable resin substrate. The hybrid SWCNTs-AgNWs film is relatively flat so that the RMS roughness of the top surface of the film is 3 nm. Addition of SWCNTs networks make the film resistance uniform; without SWCNTs, sheet resistance of the surface composed of just AgNWs in resin varies from 20 Ω/sq to 107 Ω/sq. With addition of SWCNTs embedded in the resin, sheet resistance of the hybrid film is 29 ± 5 Ω/sq and uniform across the 47 mm diameter film discs; further, the optimized film has 85% transparency. Our lamination-transfer UV process doesn't need solvent for sacrificial substrate removal and leads to good mechanical interlocking of the nano-material networks. Additionally, electrochemical study of the film for supercapacitors application showed an impressive 10 times higher current in cyclic voltammograms compared to the control without SWCNTs. Our fabrication method is simple, cost effective and enables the large-scale fabrication of flat and flexible transparent conductive films.

Carbon Nanotube Driver Circuit for 6 × 6 Organic Light Emitting Diode Display.

Single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) is expected to be a very promising material for flexible and transparent driver circuits for active matrix organic light emitting diode (AM OLED) displays due to its high field-effect mobility, excellent current carrying capacity, optical transparency and mechanical flexibility. Although there have been several publications about SWNT driver circuits, none of them have shown static and dynamic images with the AM OLED displays. Here we report on the first successful chemical vapor deposition (CVD)-grown SWNT network thin film transistor (TFT) driver circuits for static and dynamic AM OLED displays with 6 × 6 pixels. The high device mobility of ~45 cm(2)V(-1)s(-1) and the high channel current on/off ratio of ~10(5) of the SWNT-TFTs fully guarantee the control capability to the OLED pixels. Our results suggest that SWNT-TFTs are promising backplane building blocks for future OLED displays.

High-performance partially aligned semiconductive single-walled carbon nanotube transistors achieved with a parallel technique.

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) are widely thought to be a strong contender for next-generation printed electronic transistor materials. However, large-scale solution-based parallel assembly of SWNTs to obtain high-performance transistor devices is challenging. SWNTs have anisotropic properties and, although partial alignment of the nanotubes has been theoretically predicted to achieve optimum transistor device performance, thus far no parallel solution-based technique can achieve this. Herein a novel solution-based technique, the immersion-cum-shake method, is reported to achieve partially aligned SWNT networks using semiconductive (99% enriched) SWNTs (s-SWNTs). By immersing an aminosilane-treated wafer into a solution of nanotubes placed on a rotary shaker, the repetitive flow of the nanotube solution over the wafer surface during the deposition process orients the nanotubes toward the fluid flow direction. By adjusting the nanotube concentration in the solution, the nanotube density of the partially aligned network can be controlled; linear densities ranging from 5 to 45 SWNTs/µm are observed. Through control of the linear SWNT density and channel length, the optimum SWNT-based field-effect transistor devices achieve outstanding performance metrics (with an on/off ratio of ~3.2 × 10(4) and mobility 46.5 cm(2) /Vs). Atomic force microscopy shows that the partial alignment is uniform over an area of 20 × 20 mm(2) and confirms that the orientation of the nanotubes is mostly along the fluid flow direction, with a narrow orientation scatter characterized by a full width at half maximum (FWHM) of <15° for all but the densest film, which is 35°. This parallel process is large-scale applicable and exploits the anisotropic properties of the SWNTs, presenting a viable path forward for industrial adoption of SWNTs in printed, flexible, and large-area electronics.

High-performance printed carbon nanotube thin-film transistors array fabricated by a nonlithography technique using hafnium oxide passivation layer and mask.

The large-scale application of semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes (s-SWCNTs) for printed electronics requires scalable, repeateable, as well as noncontaminating assembly techniques. Previously explored nanotube deposition methods include serial methods such as inkjet printing and parallel methods such as spin-coating with photolithography. The serial methods are usually slow, whereas the photolithography-related parallel methods result in contamination of the nanotubes. In this paper, we report a reliable clean parallel method for fabrication of arrays of carbon nanotube-based field effect transistors (CNTFETs) involving shadow mask patterning of a passivating layer of Hafnium oxide (HfO(2)) over the nanotube (CNT) active channel regions and plasma etching of the unprotected nanotubes. Pure (99%) semiconducting SWCNTs are first sprayed over the entire surface of a wafer substrate followed by a two-step shadow masking procedure to first deposit metal electrodes and then a HfO(2) isolation/passivation layer over the device channel region. The exposed SWCNT network outside the HfO(2) protected area is removed with oxygen plasma etching. The HfO(2) thus serves as both the device isolation mask during the plasma etching and as a protective passivating layer in subsequent use. The fabricated devices on SiO(2)/Si substrate exhibit good device performance metrics, with on/off ratio ranging from 1 × 10(1) to 3 × 10(5) and mobilities of 4 to 23 cm(2)/(V s). The HfO(2)/Si devices show excellent performance with on/off ratios of 1 × 10(2) to 2 × 10(4) and mobilities of 8 to 56 cm(2)/(V s). The optimum devices (on HfO(2)/Si) have an on/off ratio of 1 × 10(4) and mobility as high as 46 cm(2)/(V s). This HfO(2)-based patterning method enables large scale fabrication of CNTFETs with no resist residue or other contamination on the device channel. Further, shadow masking circumvents the need for expensive and area-limited lithography patterning process. The device channel is also protected from external environment by the HfO(2) film and the passivated device shows similar (or slightly improved) performance after 300 days of exposure to ambient conditions.