Effect of Drawing on the Electrical, Thermoelectrical,and Mechanical Properties of Wet-Spun PEDOT:PSS Fibers

New electrically conducting and mechanically robust fibers and yarns are needed as building blocks for emerging textile devices. In this work, we describe a continuous wet-spinning process for the fabrication of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) fibers with high electrical conductivity, excellent mechanical properties, and moderate thermoelectric performance by including a drawing stage in dimethyl sulfoxide. Drawing the fibers induced preferential orientation of the polymer chains in the fiber axis direction. With increased drawing, the room temperature electrical conductivity saturated at approximately 2000 S cm–1. The Seebeck coefficient was found to be rather constant with drawing. Therefore, the thermoelectric power factor saturated with applied draw between 40 and 50 μW m–1 K–2. The thermal conductivities of the drawn fibers were measured between 4 and 5 W m–1 K–1 at liquid nitrogen temperatures. Although the relatively high thermal conductivity negatively affects t...