This symposium will cover current trends, advances and perspectives on the use of flexible, stretchable and self-healing electronic materials for biological interfaces. Flexible, stretchable and self-healing electronic materials are highly demanded in bioelectronics. However, despite recent progress, their fabrication remains challenging, due to the difficulty to combine properties that are in principle mutually exclusive, such as high electrical conductivity, mechanical strength and flexibility/stretchability. In addition, biological applications require the ability to work in humid or liquid environments, as well as biocompatibility with tissues and organs. In this symposium we intend to stimulate a debate on the different approaches to overcome the above-mentioned challenges.

Symposium contribution will address both fundamental and applied research. Particular attention will be devoted to the various classes of degradable and self healing electronic materials, including organic conducting polymers, bio-inspired materials and inorganic semiconductors. The discussion will include synthesis, processing, patterning and device fabrication.

The symposium will last 4 days and will be tentatively divided in four parts: i) emerging materials, ii) progress in self-healing electronic materials, iii) processing and devices fabrication (e.g. photolithography, printing and alternative approaches) and iv) in vitro and in vivo applications. Abstracts will be solicited in the following areas: conducting and semiconducting organic and biological materials, flexible silicon structures, stretchable conductors, self-healing materials.

biomaterial electronic material ion-exchange material ionic conductor polymer scanning electron microscopy (SEM) scanning probe microscopy (SPM) secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) thin film