Sustainable Solutions for Energy Autonomous Soft Sensing Systems

Soft devices provide unique opportunities in our quest for a more sustainable future. Their adaptive and responsive nature renders them attractive for diverse application fields, ranging from wearables in health monitoring to exploration of extreme environments. 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 solar-powered flexible and lightweight devices, from wearable sensors to energy-autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles that utilize stable and ultrathin perovskite photovoltaic cells with record specific power. 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 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 sensor systems.