Biodegradable Amorphous Metal-Oxide Printable Electronics

To address the DARPA need to develop a set of biodegradable materials and industry-compatible fabrication processes for demonstrating fully biodegradable, biomedical sensor/actuator systems with electronic performance comparable to silicon on insulator (SOI)-based systems, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a new Biodegradable Amorphous Metal-Oxide Printable Electronics (BioAMP) technology. This proposed technology is based on room temperature printing of amorphous metal oxide sol-gel films directly insulating biodegradable polymer substrates. The innovation in using photochemical activation of metal oxide semiconductor devices will allow for circumvention of the low carrier mobility drawback of the organic electronics, while keeping the advantage of the"benchtop"manufacturing technology. As a result, this technology offers a low-cost solution for developing various biodegradable and implantable electronics that directly address the DARPA requirements. In Phase I, POC will demonstrate the feasibility of BioAMP by conducting a comprehensive theoretical study and performing proof-of-concept experiments. In Phase II, POC plans to build several fully operational biodegradable electronic prototypes that will be tested in simulated environments, thus achieving TRL-5.