Abstract
Biodegradable and soft biomedical electronics that eliminate secondary surgery and ensure intimate contact with soft biological tissues of the human body are of growing interest, due to their emerging applications in high-quality healthcare monitoring and effective disease treatments. Recent systematic studies have significantly expanded the biodegradable electronic materials database, and various novel transient systems have been proposed. Biodegradable materials with soft properties and integration schemes of flexible or/and stretchable platforms will further advance electronic systems that match the properties of biological systems, providing an important step along the path towards clinical trials. This review focuses on recent progress and achievements in biodegradable and soft electronics for biomedical applications. The available biodegradable materials in their soft formats, the associated novel fabrication schemes, the device layouts, and the functionality of a variety of fully bioresorbable and soft devices, are reviewed. Finally, the key challenges and possible future directions of biodegradable and soft electronics are provided.
Highlights
With the growth of the global economy, and the development of science and technology, a massive assortment of electronics has been widely used in human society, which plays an important role in industrial processes, telecommunication, entertainment, healthcare, etc. [1,2,3,4,5]
This review focuses on recent progress and achievements in electronics that combine both soft and biodegradable characteristics, targeting biomedical applications, while reviews on general transient electronics can be found elsewhere in references [6,13]
Because of their close connection with tissues and organs, soft transient electronics can detect abnormal physiological signals sensitively and precisely, even at the early stages of specific diseases, before they can be observed by conventional equipment, which is important for human healthcare and follow-up therapy
Summary
With the growth of the global economy, and the development of science and technology, a massive assortment of electronics has been widely used in human society, which plays an important role in industrial processes, telecommunication, entertainment, healthcare, etc. [1,2,3,4,5]. Recent research on advanced materials [14], fabrication approaches [20], and design layouts [21] yield biodegradable and soft electronics that enable intimate integration into the body, with unique capabilities for diagnostic and therapeutic functions, which would otherwise be impossible when using conventional wafer-based electronics that are built upon non-degradable and rigid printed circuit boards. These emerging technologies provide critical tools that could have great potential to improve human health and enhance the understanding of biological systems. Perspectives and the outlook of biodegradable soft electronics for clinical medicine are provided at the end of the article
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