Innovative organic materials for probing and stimulating biological systems

Soft Organic Mixed Ionic Electronic Conductors tremendously boosted the technological advancement towards sensing and stimulating of biological entities, bridging the mechanical/electrical mismatch between biological and electronic materials, while enabling versatile processing, fundamental for envisioning biological applications.

Scope:

The scope of the symposium will be to share the recent research achievements on the use of Organic Mixed Ionic Electronic Conductors (OMIECs) at the interface with biological systems. Examples include the stimulation of living cells and tissuesin- and ex-vivo, as well as sensing of relevant (bio-)molecules, analytes and physiological parameters.
The main advantages of OMIECs with respect to most inorganic materials are their mechanical properties matching those of biological entities, as well as their ionic conduction, making them extremely powerful in the interaction with living systems. The development of novel polymeric and molecular materials using new processing avenue opened new frontiers in bioelectronics, by dramatically enhancing the performance of devices such as transistors and electrodes, improving real-time monitoring of multiple parameters, and making possible high precision electrical and electrochemical stimulation/recording. Furthermore, advances in the formulation of printing inks, gels and synthetic functionalization of polythiophene-based conductors enabled high-resolution techniques for the realization of 3D architectures using OMIECs, hydrogels and hybrid structures, closely mimicking the biological systems and environment.
The symposium will cover novel materials for flexible and light-weight devices (i.e., plastic, textile, paper) applied to healthcare, skin regeneration, plant analyte sensing, electrical signal recording in plants and mammals, among other biotechnological applications. In addition, attention will be paid to recent development of organic bioelectronics towards new 3D architectures (molding, 3D printing).
Bringing together physicists, chemists, material scientists, engineers, biologist and clinical researchers, the symposium aims at sharing the recent advances on the optical, electrical, and mechanical characterization of new organic materials, with a particular focus on their use for (bio-)sensing and stimulation-inducing applications at the interface with mammalian and plant biology.

Hot topics to be covered by the symposium:

• Organic materials for bioelectronic applications
• Organic materials for stimulating living systems
• Sensing of chemical analytes and (bio-)markers
• Optoelectronics
• Impedance-based, in-vitro biosensors
• Wearable sensors for physiological parameter monitoring
• Tissue-like 2D electronics
• Hybrid nanomaterials for bioelectronics
• Hydrogel/polymer printing and molding