Developed by a team of electronic engineers at the Department of Information Engineering (DII) of the University of Pisa, it represents a major step forward in the study of conformable electronics, creating devices that work on surfaces thin enough to be applied anywhere.
The research, a collaboration between the University of Pisa, IIT Milan and EPFL, has been published in the prestigious journal Nano Letters.
“Adapting electronic devices to perfectly conform to curved, irregular surfaces is a difficult goal, but one that can also pave the way for endless applications, in both the industrial and medical sectors,” explains Gianluca Fiori, professor of Electronics at the DII. “The device we have developed is extremely thin, on the order of a few microns, and has a flexible polymer substrate that can adhere perfectly to any type of surface. Many transistors can be integrated in one square centimetre and our next challenge will be to create complex circuits that can be applied, for example, to food to monitor its deterioration throughout the production, transport and sales chain, in order to reduce food waste, or to the body itself to monitor physiological parameters in a non-invasive way”.
The application of flexible, conformable nanodevices to the biomedical field is the cutting-edge research that Gianluca Fiori is pursuing in the SKIN2TRONICS project, recently funded by ERC Synergy Grants, Europe’s most competitive and prestigious research funding programme.
“The work to create the device,” adds Federico Parenti, PhD student at DII and first author of the paper, “involves a complex process that requires highly advanced machinery, which our team has designed. In particular, we have developed an inkjet printer capable of defining structures with micrometric resolution, overcoming the limitations of the models currently on the market. The electronic device is the result of a combination of standard and more advanced techniques for depositing microelectronic material, such as ink deposition”.
“Transistors produced in this way,” concludes Elisabetta Dimaggio, electronics researcher at DII, “can achieve excellent performance, and can therefore be perfectly integrated into more complex electronic circuits, both digital and analogue. Furthermore, our research has shown that these devices maintain the required performance levels even under repeated bending stress. This resilience is crucial for conformable electronics.
Given the enormous potential for development and application, the research on flexible electrical devices is one of the flagship research areas of our laboratories dedicated to the digital transition of companies and to Industry 5.0, where cutting-edge research for future industrial processes is carried out in different fields in an integrated and interdisciplinary way”.