Biopolymers for Sensor and Electrical Applications

Using biopolymers for electrical applications is a fast-growing field. In this area, little work was published concerning the biopolymer collagen or its denaturized form gelatin. However, these biopolymers have interesting properties and a commercially competitive price. In the paper at hand, we engage the development of electrical conductive biopolymers for electrical applications as a part of the research project bioESens at the University of Applied Science Dresden. The focus of our research is the examination of sensory effects and the usability in the thick film- and blade coating technology. To be more precisely, we discuss the possibility of a new setup to measure the electrical conductivity of sensor samples and present results of our development of a conductive collagen/gelatin system. In a first stage, the low intrinsic conductivity of this biopolymer should be increased. One approach is to use conductive additives like Carbon black [1]. Our goal is to achieve a minimum conductivity level of 10
^-2
S/m. However to optimize the viscosity of the additive biopolymer composition, investigations are necessary to assess the processability of a filled polymer. Furthermore, the impedance shall be examined, which can be dependent on temperature or humidity. For that, it is necessary to investigate possible disturbance values. One of this is the contact resistances between the polymer and the cooper pads. Therefore, a measurement setup was constructed. It allows testing of the conductivity of sensor samples with a broad variety of contact setup for subsequent investigations.