Built To Disappear

Microelectronics dominates the technological and commercial landscape of today's electronics industry; ultrahigh density integrated circuits on rigid silicon provide the computing power for smart appliances that help us organize our daily lives. Integrated circuits function flawlessly for decades, yet we like to replace smart phones and tablet computers every year. Disposable electronics, built to disappear in a controlled fashion after the intended lifespan, may be one of the potential applications of transient single-crystalline silicon nanomembranes, reported by Hwang et al. in this issue of ACS Nano. We briefly outline the development of this latest branch of electronics research, and we present some prospects for future developments. Electronics is steadily evolving, and 20 years from now we may find it perfectly normal for smart appliances to be embedded everywhere, on textiles, on our skin, and even in our body.