Sustainable Bioelectronic Sensors

Soft bioelectronic devices provide unique opportunities in our quest for a more sustainable future. Their adaptive and responsive nature renders them especially attractive as wearables in health monitoring. Among the key issues to overcome for successful market adoption are untethered operation, high performance green materials and end-of-lifetime considerations in complex (soft) systems. This talk introduces solutions for indoor light harvesting to power flexible and lightweight bioelectronic devices. We here utilize stable and ultrathin perovskite photovoltaic cells with record specific power for battery-free sensor patches. Whenever (sun)light is not available, battery powered solutions remain in high demand due to their relatively high power and energy densities. We here introduce stretchable, yet degradable and printable forms of batteries for wearable bio-sensors. Pushing the boundaries of sustainable electronics, we demonstrate new concepts for advanced fungal mycelium skins as biodegradable substrate material. With reduced surface roughness and improved mechanical stability, these naturally grown flexible circuit boards offer solutions for next-generation green bioelectronic systems.