EECS Seminar: Transient Electronics – From Bioelectronic Medicines to Environmental Monitors

Abstract: A remarkable feature of modern integrated circuit technology is its ability to operate in a stable fashion, almost indefinitely, without physical or chemical change. Recently developed classes of electronic materials and manufacturing approaches create an opportunity to engineer the opposite outcome, in the form of ‘transient’ devices that dissolve, disintegrate, degrade or otherwise physically disappear at triggered times or with controlled rates. Water-soluble transient electronic devices serve as the foundations for applications in zero-impact environmental monitors, "green" consumer electronic gadgetry and bio-resorbable medical implants. This talk describes the essential concepts in electrical engineering, materials science and assembly techniques for bio/ecoresorbable electronics in 2D and 3D formats and with a range of functions. Wireless temporary pacemakers that minimize risks after cardiac surgeries and passive microfliers that enable tracking of environmental processes represent some recent system level examples.

Bio: John A. Rogers obtained B.A. and B.S. degrees in chemistry and in physics from the University of Texas, Austin, in 1989. From MIT, he received S.M. degrees in physics and in chemistry in 1992 and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry in 1995. From 1995 to 1997, Rogers was a junior fellow in the Harvard University Society of Fellows. He joined Bell Laboratories as a member of technical staff in 1997 and then served as director of the Condensed Matter Physics Research Department from the end of 2000 to 2002. He then spent 13 years on the faculty at the University of Illinois, most recently as the Swanlund chair professor and director of the Seitz Materials Research Laboratory. In the Fall of 2016, he moved to Northwestern University where he is director of the recently endowed Querrey-Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics. He has co-authored nearly 1000 papers and is co-inventor on more than 100 patents, more than 70 or which are licensed to large companies or to startups that have emerged from his labs. His research has been recognized by many awards including a MacArthur fellowship (2009), the Lemelson-MIT Prize (2011), the Smithsonian Award for American Ingenuity in the Physical Sciences (2013), the MRS Medal (2018), the Benjamin Franklin Medal from the Franklin Institute (2019), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2021), the James Prize for Science and Technology Integration from the NAS (2022) and the IEEE Biomedical Engineering Award (2024). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Inventors and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.