Development and characterization of biodegradable conductive polymers for the next generation of RF bio-resonators

The objective of this research is to develop a completely polymeric and biodegradable RF driven RLC resonator circuit. New polymer composites are fabricated and characterized: they consist on conductive polymer nanoparticles (polypyrrole PPy) embedded in a biodegradable polymer matrix (both polylactide PLLA and polycaprolactone PCL are under investigation). The influence of PPy content and polymerization conditions (temperature, atmosphere, additional doping agent) on the resistivity are evaluated. A strong decrease of the resistivity is observed for composites containing more than 12% and 6% of PPy for PLLA/PPy and PCL/PPy, respectively. Resistivities of 0.0043Ω.m (PLLA/PPy39%) and 0.0016Ω.m (PCL/PPy39%) are achieved. A Matlab modelling and HFSS simulation of the RLC resonator performances based on the measured material properties is performed. The simulation results validate the use of these composites to successfully fabricate RLC resonators.