Organic bioelectronics has emerged as a disruptive technology, introducing devices with unprecedented features of biocompatibility and functionality. The potential of organic materials resides not only in their favorable mechanical properties, which comply to those of biological tissues, but also on their ability to enable mixed electronic and ionic transport and on the possibility to finely tune their optoelectronic properties, such as optical absorption, charge photogeneration and transport. In addition, the synthesis of organic compounds can be tuned to further improve biocompatibility and to allow for chemical or biochemical functionalization, as well as to enable cost-effective and scalable processability of materials. For these reasons, a plethora of biocompatible, mechanically compliant, large area, multipoint biosensing and stimulating devices are now available, generating novel interaction routes between biological systems, bioelectronics devices, and consumer electronics, such as smartphones and portable devices. Because of the general involvement of ionic transport in biological environments, organic bioelectronic devices are inherently slow, i.e. characterized by slow switching capabilities, limited to few kHz. This fundamental aspect brings along some limitations, such as low-frequency operation and fluctuations of the operating parameters. The goal of the LEAPh project is to develop a novel bioelectronic device specifically devised to address in an unprecedented way the low-operating frequency of current bioelectronics, as well as providing a noise-free measurement of biochemical and biological interactions. Moreover, the same technology could pave the way towards a new class of low-voltage organic electro-optical systems.
Light-modulated organic Electrolyte-gAted Phototransistors
Abstract