Electroactive 2D TMDC Based Polymer Hybrid and Hydrogel

Since the first discovery of graphene by Novoselov in 20041, graphene and in general 2D materials showed an increasing interest in the scientific community. Specifically Transition Metal Dichalcogenides (TMDC) showed a surge in interest, due to their different properties and flexibility due to the large amount of variability in the group. Not only this, but they can be easily engineered in different ways to tune their properties, examples are doping, functionalization and hybridation with other material2. In this last context, Conductive Polymers (CP)3 show complementary electrochemical properties to the 2D TMDC materials and can be exploited to further improve their performances. Here, we report on the synthesis of hybrids based polyaniline (PANI) and 2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), employing different methodologies and formulations. In particular, we resort to liquid phase exfoliation (LPE)4 to produce 2D TMDCs in both the 2H and 1T phase and to in-situ polymerization to produce PANI chains directly on the surface of these nanomaterials to further amplify the electrochemical properties of the 2D material. Then the as obtained material can be further characterized electrochemically and can be also used in conjunction with flexible polymer scaffold in order to obtain piezo- active hydrogels. The as-obtained hydrogels are characterized through a combination of techniques and their swelling behaviour and mechanical properties are investigated.