Cleanroom‐Free Toolkit for Patterning Submicron‐Resolution Bioelectronics on Flexibles
Fabricating flexible bioelectronics remains an ongoing challenge in pursuing a cost-effective, efficient, scalable, and environmentally friendly approach for research and commercial applications. The current dominant method, lithography, presents challenges due to its incompatibility with solvent-sensitive biomaterials and the phase mismatch between the photoresist and flexible substrates, such as elastomers. This study proposes a simplified, cleanroom-free toolkit as a potential alternative to lithography for fabricating intricate bioelectronics on flexible substrates with submicron resolution. This technique integrates a two-photon laser writing mask, mask transfer, and multi-layer/material patterning processes, enabling batch-to-batch processing and making it suitable for scalable production. With excellent conformal patterning capability, different functional and encapsulation biomaterials can be patterned on flexible substrates, including elastomers, parylene-C, polymer sheets, skin, fabric, and plant leaves. The versatility of this toolkit is validated by fabricating various prototypes of wearable and implantable bioelectronics, demonstrating excellent performance.
Authors
- Sophia L. Bidinger (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1165-2568)
- Alexander J. Boys (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6488-7005)
- George G. Malliaras (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4582-8501)
- Marco Vinicio Alban‐Paccha (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3948-0446)
- Alejandro Carnicer‐Lombarte (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5650-4692)
- Ji Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-7691-0357)
- Sohini Kar‐Narayan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8151-1616)
- Chaoqun Dong (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6433-3478)
- Damiano G. Barone (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0091-385X)
- Scott T. Keene (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6635-670X)
- Ruben Ruiz‐Mateos Serrano (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8501-7068)
- Xudong Tao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8177-8831)
- Salim El Hadwe (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5521-524X)
- Luke W. Gatecliff (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0227-5652)
- Antonio Dominguez‐Alfaro (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3215-9732)
- Christopher Slaughter
- Jakob Chovas
Institutions
- Dartmouth College (US)
- Houston Methodist (US)
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- Addenbrooke's Hospital (GB)
- Rice University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Small
- Published
- 2025-03-07
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.202411979
- Citations
- 6
- Primary Topic
- Neuroscience and Neural Engineering
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 5.45
Funders
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council