Biodegradable, All-Organic Transistors Printed on a Bioderived Polymer

The growing demand of disposable electronics raises serious concerns for the corresponding increase in the amount of electronic waste (e-waste), with severe environmental impact. Organic electronics has been proposed long ago as a sustainable and energy efficient technological platform. Yet, such technology is inevitably leading to a drastic increase of plastic waste if common approaches for flexible substrates are followed. In this scenario, <b>biodegradable electronics</b> is an incipient need in order to mitigate the above mentioned issues. Flexibility, solution processability, low capital expenditure and energy-efficient processes, which are distinctive features of organic electronics, have to be complemented by a sustainable end-of-life of materials employed. This requirement calls for solutions where materials, especially substrates that represent the largest volume, can be biodegraded in the environment with no harm, yet assuring that no precious resources are dispersed. In this work, we succesfully employed a bioderived and biodegradable biopolymer as a substrate for an <b>all-organic field effect transistor</b> (OFET) based on an inkjet printed polymer semiconductor. The <b>OFETs showed good reproducibility</b>, a proper current modulation and <b>extremely low leakage</b>, which remained almost unaltered <b>also after intensive mechanical stresses as bending and rolling</b>. Such mechanical stability and flexibility, together with the biodegradability and bioderivation, make this approach an appealing candidate for the development of sustainable printed electronics, with widespread future applications in the biomedical and food packaging sector.