Connecting Biology With Electronics!

Scientists Designing Polymers That Can Bridge the Biological and Electronic Divide Must Also Deal With Incompatible Messaging Styles. Electronics Rely on Racing Streams of Electrons, but the Same Is Not True for Our Brains.

- James Urton

The problem is a fundamental incompatibility in communication styles. That conclusion might crop up during divorce proceedings, or describe a diplomatic row. But scientists designing polymers that can bridge the biological and electronic divide must also deal with incompatible messaging styles. Electronics rely on racing streams of electrons, but the same is not true for our brains.

“Most of our technology relies on electronic currents, but biology transduces signals with ions, which are charged atoms or molecules,” said David Ginger, professor of chemistry at the University of Washington and chief scientist at the UW’s Clean Energy Institute. “If you want to interface electronics and biology, you need a material that effectively communicates across those two realms.”

Ginger is senior author of a paper published online June 19 in Nature Materials in which UW researchers directly measured a thin film made of a single type of conjugated polymer — a conducting plastic — as it interacted with ions and electrons. They show how variations in the polymer layout yielded rigid and non-rigid regions of the film, and that these regions could accommodate electrons or ions — but not both equally. The softer, non-rigid areas were poor electron conductors but could subtly swell to take in ions, while the opposite was true for rigid regions.