Biodegradable and stretchable polymeric materials for transient electronic devices
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Introduction Devices that are concurrently stretchable and biodegradable will enable a new frontier of multifunctional and sustainable electronics with opportunities in medicine, defense, energy storage, and consumer electronics.1 Inside the body, biodegradable and stretchable electronic implants can conform to natural shapes and moving surfaces, replacing the current stiff implantable devices that often cause inflammatory responses because of mechanical mismatches with soft tissue.1,2 Once the device’s function has been completed, degradation can be autonomous or triggered, eliminating the need for subsequent device removal surgeries that are often problematic. Outside of the body, stretchable and biodegradable systems are highly desirable for dynamic, short-term-use electronics, such as disposable sensors for widespread environmental and agricultural monitoring as well as temporary wearable consumer products. The fields of biodegradable electronics and stretchable electronics have thus far largely developed independently,3–6 with few devices having simultaneous capabilities of stretchability and biodegradability. In particular, there are few reported polymeric materials that are simultaneously stretchable, electronconducting, and biodegradable. This article introduces strategies for independently enabling stretchability and biodegradability, and then reviews organic materials that can be leveraged for devices that intertwine both. Examples of concurrently
stretchable and transient devices are highlighted, followed by an outlook on the future of multifunctional devices.
Stretchability and biodegradability Stretchable electronic materials have enabled new opportunities for electronics to more seamlessly integrate with irregular, deformable, or dynamic systems, particularly the human body.4,7 Stretchability can be attained either by engineering nonstretchable materials to accommodate strain (e.g., serpentine architectures) or by harnessing chemistry to synthesize intrinsically stretchable electroactive polymers.5 While engineering approaches can preserve excellent electronic performance of inorganic elements, chemical strategies to achieve intrinsic stretchability require simpler processing to enable facile functionalization and can potentially enable higher device density. Active research in achieving these characteristics in electronically conducting polymers (semiconductors and conductors) is underway. In general, intrinsic stretchability in polymers is enabled by the unfolding, sliding, and disentanglement of amorphous polymer chains under tensile stress. Elasticity, another key mechanical property that allows devices to return to their original form after deformation, requires linkages between polymer chains. Thus, polymers with both high elasticity and stretchability need to possess a combination of amorphous and cross-linked regions, which can be attained through blending,
Kathy Liu, Stanford University, USA; [email protected] Helen Tran, Stanford University, USA; [email protected] Vivian Rachel Feig, Sta
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