Strategies to control humidity sensitivity of azobenzene isomerisation kinetics in polymer thin films

Sami Vesamäki; Henning Meteling; Roshan Nasare; Antti Siiskonen; Jani Patrakka; Nelmary Roas-Escalona; Markus Linder; Matti Virkki; Arri Priimagi

doi:10.1038/s43246-024-00642-w

Strategies to control humidity sensitivity of azobenzene isomerisation kinetics in polymer thin films

Sami Vesamäki
, Henning Meteling
, Roshan Nasare
, Antti Siiskonen
, Jani Patrakka
, Nelmary Roas-Escalona
, Markus Linder
, Matti Virkki
, Arri Priimagi^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

BA6301 Optical measurements

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Scientific › peer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Azobenzenes are versatile photoswitches that garner interest in applications ranging from photobiology to energy storage. Despite their great potential, transforming azobenzene-based discoveries and proof-of-concept demonstrations from the lab to the market is highly challenging. Herein we give an overview of a journey that started from a discovery of hydroxyazobenzene’s humidity sensitive isomerisation kinetics, developed into commercialization efforts of azobenzene-containing thin film sensors for optical monitoring of the relative humidity of air, and arrives to the present work aiming for better design of such sensors by understanding the different factors affecting the humidity sensitivity. Our concept is based on thermal isomerisation kinetics of tautomerizable azobenzenes in polymer matrices which, using pre-defined calibration curves, can be converted to relative humidity at known temperature. We present a small library of tautomerizable azobenzenes exhibiting humidity sensitive isomerisation kinetics in hygroscopic polymer films. We also investigate how water absorption properties of the polymer used, and the isomerisation kinetics are linked and how the azobenzene content in the thin film affects both properties. Based on our findings we propose simple strategies for further development of azobenzene-based optical humidity sensors.

Original language	English
Article number	209
Journal	Communications Materials
Volume	5
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s43246-024-00642-w
Publication status	Published - Dec 2024
MoE publication type	A1 Journal article-refereed

Funding

This work was started under ERC Proof of Concept -project OPTOSENSE (Project Number 789788) and continued with the help of Business Finland Research to Business funding (diary no. 42576/31/2020). S.V. gratefully acknowledges the Vilho, Yrj\u00F6 and Kalle V\u00E4is\u00E4l\u00E4 Foundation of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters for a grant for financial support. The work is conducted as part of the Center of Excellence programme Life-Inspired Hybrid Materials Research (LIBER; no. 346105 and 346107) and the Flagship programme on Photonics Research and Innovation (PREIN, no. 320165), both funded by Research Council of Finland. A.P. Acknowledges the financial support of the European Research Council (Consolidator Grant project MULTIMODAL, no. 101045223). This work made use of Aalto University Bioeconomy Facilities for the QCM-D measurements, for which the authors thank them. The authors are also grateful to Tampere Microscopy Center for providing facilities for atomic force microscopy and Matias Paatelainen for conducting the measurements, Petteri Huttunen for his help with DVS measurements, and Dr. Kim Kuntze and Prof. Tero-Petri Ruoko for insightful discussions.

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10.1038/s43246-024-00642-wLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "Strategies to control humidity sensitivity of azobenzene isomerisation kinetics in polymer thin films",

abstract = "Azobenzenes are versatile photoswitches that garner interest in applications ranging from photobiology to energy storage. Despite their great potential, transforming azobenzene-based discoveries and proof-of-concept demonstrations from the lab to the market is highly challenging. Herein we give an overview of a journey that started from a discovery of hydroxyazobenzene{\textquoteright}s humidity sensitive isomerisation kinetics, developed into commercialization efforts of azobenzene-containing thin film sensors for optical monitoring of the relative humidity of air, and arrives to the present work aiming for better design of such sensors by understanding the different factors affecting the humidity sensitivity. Our concept is based on thermal isomerisation kinetics of tautomerizable azobenzenes in polymer matrices which, using pre-defined calibration curves, can be converted to relative humidity at known temperature. We present a small library of tautomerizable azobenzenes exhibiting humidity sensitive isomerisation kinetics in hygroscopic polymer films. We also investigate how water absorption properties of the polymer used, and the isomerisation kinetics are linked and how the azobenzene content in the thin film affects both properties. Based on our findings we propose simple strategies for further development of azobenzene-based optical humidity sensors.",

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AU - Vesamäki, Sami

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AU - Nasare, Roshan

AU - Siiskonen, Antti

AU - Patrakka, Jani

AU - Roas-Escalona, Nelmary

AU - Linder, Markus

AU - Virkki, Matti

AU - Priimagi, Arri

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Strategies to control humidity sensitivity of azobenzene isomerisation kinetics in polymer thin films

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