Quantum mechanics

Voltage

Engineering

Materials science

Layer (electronics)

Thin-film transistor

Power (physics)

Substrate (aquarium)

Electronic circuit

Geology

Oceanography

Transistor

Physics

Nanotechnology

Carbon nanotube

Integrated circuit

Miniaturization

Field-effect transistor

Nanotube

Subthreshold conduction

Carbon nanotube field-effect transistor

Optoelectronics

Electrical engineering

Nature Electronics

Integrated circuits that can be interfaced with biological systems could expand the function of electronic devices, providing, for example, advanced forms of monitoring, diagnosis and therapy in clinical applications. However, limitations in the performance of electronic devices on flexible or biodegradable substrates constrain the complexity and power dissipation of such devices. Here, we report carbon nanotube-based thin-film transistors and integrated circuits that can be transferred to arbitrary surfaces. We show that this wafer-scale platform can be transferred to biodegradable polymers, plant leaves and a person's wrist, and demonstrate the operation of the transferred devices and circuits on a curved plant leaf. Our nanotube thin-film transistors on biodegradable flexible substrates have ultralow power consumption with an off-state current as low as 0.1 pA μm−1, a subthreshold swing of 62 mV dec−1, and a static power consumption of 2.5 × 10−13 W in an inverter. The thin-film transistors also exhibit highly uniform performance with an 80 mV standard deviation in the threshold voltages. Furthermore, we constructed a full adder integrated circuit, with rail-to-rail outputs and a read-only memory, on a flexible substrate that can be driven by a small single supply voltage of 2 V. Carbon nanotube-based thin-film transistors and integrated circuits, which offer low power consumption and highly uniform performance, can be transferred to arbitrary substrates, including biodegradable polymers, plant leaves, and a person's wrist.

Low-power carbon nanotube-based integrated circuits that can be transferred to biological surfaces