Tyrosine-Rich Peptide Insulator for Rapidly Dissolving Transient Electronics

Transient electronics is a good platform for human implantable biomedical devices for diagnosing diseases and delivering therapeutic materials because additional surgery is not required to retrieve the device. Surrounding bio-fluids inevitably dissolve device components, and the remaining electronic debris can trigger hazardous inflammation reactions within human body. Therefore, it is important to reduce the total dissolution time of devices even after they stop working. Thus, fast-dissolving tyrosine-based peptides are suggested as an insulator instead of SiO2, which has been used as a dissolution retarder in transient electronics. By combining a peptide insulator, zinc oxide semiconductor, and tungsten conductor, a biocompatible and biodegradable thin film transistor is fabricated. The device exhibits moderate performance (ON/OFF >10(3)and field-effect mobility of approximate to 0.6 cm(2)V(-1)s(-1)) and is fast-dissolving (<3 h) in bio-fluids.