Bioelectronics is an emerging field at the intersection of biology and electronics, which aims to create new ways to interface traditional semiconductor control circuitry with biological entities. Thus, a key goal in the field is to achieve ionic-to-electronic transduction, i.e. to create devices that translate biological signals (often ionic in nature) to high fidelity electronic signals (carried by electrons and holes) and vice versa. The motivation for the work presented in this thesis is the creation of biocompatible, all-solid-state transducing elements which could form the basis of so-called bioelectronic logic. To this end, the functional biomaterial eumelanin was investigated as the primary transducing element in an Organic Electrochemical Transistor (OECT) architecture. Eumelanin is the human skin pigment and possesses a diverse collection of physico-chemical properties including electrical and photoconductivity, featureless broadband optical absorption, persistent free radical behaviour, and almost unity non-radiative conversion of absorbed photon energy. In addition it can be cast into device quality thin films. As a biomaterial eumelanin is inherently biocompatible, which is a key property for any viable bioelectronic material. However, it
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