Frontiers of Materials Award Symposium: 2021 Functional Nanomaterials: Translating Innovation into Pioneering Technologies: Session II
Program Organizers: Huanyu Cheng, Pennsylvania State University

Monday 2:00 PM
March 15, 2021
Room: RM 7
Location: TMS2021 Virtual

2:00 PM  Invited
Becoming Sustainable, The New Frontier in Soft Electronics and Robotics: Martin Kaltenbrunner¹; ¹Johannes Kepler University Linz
    The advancement of technology has a profound and far-reaching impact on our society, now penetrating all areas of our life. From cradle to grave, we are supported by and depend on a wide range of electronic and robotic appliances. These advances however come at the price of negatively impacting our ecosystem, with growing demands on energy, contributions to greenhouse gas emissions and environmental pollution. This talk introduces materials and methods including tough yet biodegradable biogels for soft systems that facilitate a broad range of applications, from transient wearable electronics to metabolizable soft robots. These embodiments are reversibly stretchable, are able to heal and are resistant to dehydration. Our systems are designed for operation in ambient conditions without fatigue, but fully degrade after use through biological triggers. Pushing the boundaries further, fast actuation in soft robotics systems, from exploiting mechanical instabilities to leveraging magnetic interactions on the millimeter scale are introduced.

2:40 PM  Invited
Organic Bioelectronics for the Precise Sensing, Delivery and Processing of Bio-signals: Magnus Berggren¹; ¹Linköping University
    In conducting polymers, the transport and polarization of electronic charges and ions are tightly coupled. This feature enables an array of electrochemical devices, such as OECTs, electrophoretic delivery devices, sensors and many more. Typically, these devices include a p-type conjugated polymer that is charge-compensated by a polyanion. The OECT and delivery devices, based on such materials, will be explained in detail along with a few applications, conducted conducted in vitro and in vivo. Further, n-type conjugated polymers will be reported along with several key-demonstrations in part targeting complementary n- and p-type device and circuit systems.

3:20 PM  Invited
Nanomembrane Materials for Electronic “Soft-Wear” and Micro-Robotic “Hard-Ware”: Oliver Schmidt¹; ¹Leibniz IFW Dresden; TU Chemnitz
     Nanomembranes are thin, flexible, transferable and can be shaped into unique 3D micro- and nanoarchitectures. This makes them attractive for various scientific disciplines ranging from ŤElectronic Soft-Wearť to ŤMicrorobotic Hard-Wareť. This talk explores the underlying science of nanomembranes and discusses the fascinating application potential of this particular class of nanomaterials ranging from flexible microchips for electronic skin [1] and self-assembled 3D microelectronics [2] to medical and microelectronic microbots [3,4]. Particular attention will be paid to the challenge of on-board energy supply for autonomously acting smart dust microsystems [5]. 1. M. Kondo et al., Sci. Adv. 6, eaay6094 (2020) 2. D. Karnaushenko et al., Adv. Mater. 32, 1902994 (2020) 3. M. Medina-Sánchez, O. G. Schmidt, Nature 545, 406 (2017) 4. V. K. Bandari et al., Nature Electron. 3, 172 (2020)5. M. Zhu, O. G. Schmidt, Nature 589, 195 (2021)

4:00 PM  Invited
Electronics on the Brain: George Malliaras¹; ¹University of Cambridge
    One of the most important scientific and technological frontiers of our time is the interfacing of electronics with the human brain. This endeavour promises to help understand how the brain works and deliver new tools for diagnosis and treatment of pathologies including epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease. Current solutions, however, are limited by the materials that are brought in contact with the tissue and transduce signals across the biotic/abiotic interface. Recent advances in electronics have made available materials with a unique combination of attractive properties, including mechanical flexibility, mixed ionic/electronic conduction, enhanced biocompatibility, and capability for drug delivery. I will present examples of novel devices for recording and stimulation of neurons and show that organic electronic materials offer tremendous opportunities to study the brain and treat its pathologies.

4:40 PM  Invited
3D Printing Functional Materials & Devices: Michael Mcalpine¹; ¹University of Minnesota
    The ability to three-dimensionally interweave biological and functional materials could enable the creation of devices possessing personalized geometries and functionalities. Indeed, interfacing active devices with biology in 3D could impact a variety of fields, including biomedical devices, regenerative biomedicines, bioelectronics, smart prosthetics, and human-machine interfaces. Biology, from the molecular scale of DNA and proteins, to the macroscopic scale of tissues and organs, is three-dimensional, often soft and stretchable, and temperature sensitive. This renders most biological platforms incompatible with the fabrication and material processing methods that have been developed and optimized for functional electronics, which are typically planar, rigid and brittle. A number of strategies have been developed to overcome these dichotomies. Our approach is to utilize extrusion-based multi-material 3D printing, which is an additive manufacturing technology that offers freeform, autonomous fabrication. This approach addresses the challenges presented above by (1) using 3D printing and imaging for personalized device architectures; (2) employing ‘nano-inks’ as an enabling route for introducing a diverse palette of functionalities; and (3) combining 3D printing of biological and functional inks on a common platform to enable the interweaving of these two worlds, from biological to electronic.