Poly(3,4‐ethylenedioxythiophene):Poly(styrene sulfonate) in antibacterial, tissue engineering and biosensors applications: Progress, challenges and perspectives

Abstract With the advancement of applications in biomedicines and bioelectronics, conducting polymers have attained huge significant attention. For such applications, poly(3,4‐ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) is considered a potential conducting polymer because of its low cost, considerable stability, high conductivity and mechanical strength. Most importantly, its easy aqueous solution processability makes it more attractive. Over the last few years, PEDOT:PSS has been predominantly explored and investigated for different optoelectronic flexible devices, and recently it has been studied for biomedical applications. PEDOT:PSS based materials have made progress in biomedicines due to their properties such as biocompatibility, cell proliferation, antibacterial, nontoxicity and so forth. To adjust the desirable properties, special attention is required for altering the structure of PEDOT:PSS material. PEDOT:PSS offers excellent antibacterial properties against both gram‐positive and gram‐negative bacteria. Moreover, PEDOT:PSS demonstrates an important role in sensing human body humidity, pressure control, glucose detection, as well as employed in human sweat sensors. Besides these, PEDOT:PSS has been studied as a scaffold for endothelial cell preservation. There are several issues which need to be resolved in the future, such as improved biocompatibility and stability to explore the PEDOT:PSS based composite materials in biomedical applications. However, a related review article is lacking, directed on the PEDOT:PSS biomedical applications, namely, antibacterial, tissue engineering, and biosensing. Therefore, the current article summarizes importance of PEDOT:PSS for biomedical applications, and main emphasis is given to its recent advances, challenges and perspectives.