Potential soluble substrates for transient electronics applications: A review

The excessive usage and demand of consumer electronics have caused an elevation of electronic waste. Typically, consumer electronics are produced with non-biodegradable, non-biostable, and sometimes fatal materials, resulting in global alarming biological summons. Thence, to mend the drawbacks, an emerging field—named transient electronics—takes effect where the biomaterial, device, substrate, and total systems disappear untraceably after steady-state operation. Conspicuously, transient electronics have induced immense curiosity in researchers to perform interesting investigations due to the feature of disintegration after stable operation. The idea of transient electronics has been implemented in biomedical, military, and nanotechnology fields. Although rapid development is evident in transient technology in a short period, it is believed that the technology will deliver the utmost prospects in advanced electronic applications. Essentially, in transient technology, the vital challenge is to determine the platform materials that offer stability, resistance, biocompatibility, and mainly, the solubility to accommodate the transient devices. In this Review, a detailed overview of different soluble substrates, such as organic, polymer, and solid-state substrates, is described, along with the feasibility of the fabricated devices on the respective substrates to support transient electronics. Second, the dissolving mechanism of the corresponding substrates is analyzed.