Degradable and Dissolvable Thin-Film Materials for the Applications of New-Generation Environmental-Friendly Electronic Devices

Abstract

Featured Application: Thin-film materials with degradability and recyclability for the fabrication of degradable, dissolvable, resorbable, and/or compatible electronic devices, especially transient resistive switching devices for security information storage and neuromorphic computing as well as environmental-friendly applications.Abstract: The environmental pollution generated by electronic waste (e-waste), waste-gas, and wastewater restricts the sustainable development of society. Environmental-friendly electronics made of degradable, resorbable, and compatible thin-film materials were utilized and explored, which was beneficial for e-waste dissolution and sustainable development. In this paper, we present a literature review about the development of various degradable and disposable thin-films for electronic applications. The corresponding preparation methods were simply reviewed and one of the most exciting and promising methods was discussed: Printing electronics technology. After a short introduction, detailed applications in the environment sensors and eco-friendly devices based on these degradable and compatible thin-films were mainly reviewed, finalizing with the main conclusions and promising perspectives. Furthermore, the future on these upcoming environmental-friendly electronic devices are proposed and prospected, especially on resistive switching devices, showing great potential applications in artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Thing (IoT). These resistive switching devices combine the functions of storage and computations, which can complement the off-shelf computing based on the von Neumann architecture and advance the development of the AI.

Becoming Sustainable, The New Frontier in Soft Robotics

“…[100] The latter is also the main driving force behind biocompatible, nontoxic, and environmentally friendly electronics. [3,101,102] With the rise of bioresorbable or transient electronics, which started with a few ground-breaking developments, [103][104][105] new classes of materials, composites, and fabrication techniques evolved with benefits for users, producers, and the environment. Key technological advances were recently reviewed, highlighting their importance for bioresorbable implants.…”

“…Memristors have a simple structure (mostly metal-insulator-metal), low power consumption, and are low cost. While a number of transient memory devices were reported that dissolve in water-a recent review is given here, [101] -only a few of them are completely biodegradable, leaving nontoxic residues. Ji and co-workers realized a biodegradable metal-insulator-metal device, using W and Mg as electrodes (80 nm each) and silk fibroin (120 nm) as switching layer [131] (Figure 6h).…”

Sensors Made of Natural Renewable Materials: Efficiency, Recyclability or Biodegradability—The Green Electronics

“…The reader is invited to refer to existing reviews on transient active electronic materials, such as that of Fu et al, where they partly focused on dissolvable metals [ 17 ], that of Cheng on dissolvable inorganic electronics, including conductors and semiconductors [ 28 , 85 ], of Li et al in 2018 [ 86 ], of Seo et al on hydrolysis of a nanoscale silicon surface [ 87 ] or that of Liu et al, which focuses on dissolvable inorganic thin films [ 88 ]. The shape and surface-to-volume ratio of the materials obviously influence their ability to be dissolved.…”

Polylactide‐perylene derivative for blue biodegradable organic light‐emitting diodes

“…Future developments, especially in the area of personalised electronic devices, will require the fabrication of electronic implants which are capable of undergoing controlled degradation within the human body. 21,22 PLA has a number of biomedical applications, especially in drug delivery, due to its optical transparency, biocompatibility, nontoxicity and tunable chemical stability. [22][23][24][25] In addition PLA, with a volume resistivity of the order of 10 9 Ω cm, is a high frequency insulator 26,27 and has been widely used in the fabrication of flexible sensors where the permanent dipole associated with the ester carbonyl moiety enables charge trapping which results in enhanced photosensitivity and thermal sensitivity.…”

“…21,22 PLA has a number of biomedical applications, especially in drug delivery, due to its optical transparency, biocompatibility, nontoxicity and tunable chemical stability. [22][23][24][25] In addition PLA, with a volume resistivity of the order of 10 9 Ω cm, is a high frequency insulator 26,27 and has been widely used in the fabrication of flexible sensors where the permanent dipole associated with the ester carbonyl moiety enables charge trapping which results in enhanced photosensitivity and thermal sensitivity. 28 Key to our work is the seminal contribution by Wu et al 29 in which PLA was utilised to construct an organic semiconductor/dielectric interface in the fabrication of organic transistors.…”