Nature as microelectronic fab: Bioelectronics: Materials, transistors and circuits

Over the last five years, a series of novel organic materials that either occur freely or are extracted from nature have been applied in transistors and simple electronic circuits (inverters) as biocompatible and biodegradable dielectrics and semiconductors. Although these materials have natural origin, are abundant on earth and in many respects were exploited by humanity since centuries or even millennia, they often do not deliver the expected outcome for high performance electronics. This situation motivated chemists to synthesize organic materials inspired by the natural ones (i.e. nature-inspired), with improved structures for high-performance organic electronics development. Here, we elaborate on the usage of the new class of naturally-occurring and nature-inspired organic materials employed in electronic circuits. Such novel structures impart high performance and high stability to integrated circuits, and hold the appealing features of biocompatibility and biodegradability. They carry a huge potential for achieving the sustainability goal in electronics industry, corroborated by resource efficiency and electronic waste reduction.