Publication date: 15th December 2025
The integration of electronics into ingestible systems has opened new frontiers in point-of-care diagnostics, personalized medicine, and gastrointestinal monitoring [1]. The development of completely edible devices made entirely of food-grade materials that can function inside the body without the need for surgical retrieval or posing long-term risks is one of the most promising avenues [2], [3]. A critical unmet need in this field is the realization of edible transistors with sufficiently fast and stable AC performance to support logic gates and dynamic circuits, enabling future applications such as intrabody communication (IBC).
In this work, an edible organic electrochemical transistor (OECT) operating at low voltage (<1 V), specifically designed as the active component of future edible signal generators, is presented. The transistor comprises inert gold electrodes on an edible ethyl cellulose substrate, a solution-processed copper phthalocyanine (CuPc) semiconductor, while for the gate dielectric, various edible electrolytes were formulated, deposited, and evaluated through electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS).
The devices were characterized in terms of their DC transport properties, including threshold voltage, transconductance, and reproducibility. Finally, OCETs dynamic behavior was evaluated through the extraction of the transition frequency (fT), a key parameter for potential integration into low-frequency oscillators. The OECTs demonstrated operation at frequencies in the kHz range which highlights their potential for dynamic circuit applications in edible electronics. Such frequency levels are sufficient to support basic logic elements and signal modulation functions, with possible future applications including, but not limited to, IBC and real-time sensing.
This work was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program “ELFO”, Grant Agreement 864299 and the European Innovation Council (EIC) Programme under the grant agreement No 101161032, funded by the European Union.
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