Enabling Transient Electronics with Degradation on Demand via Light-Responsive Encapsulation of a Hydrogel-Oxide Bilayer

Physically transient electronics, which can disappear under certain conditions in aqueous solutions or biofluids, has attracted increasing attention because of its potential applications as green electronics and biomedical devices. Till now, the excitation of the transient process is achieved by passive dissolution of the encapsulation layer, which has a very limited control over the process. Here, we report a novel light-triggered encapsulation strategy via a bilayer of a light-responsive hydrogel and oxide to control the degradation on demand in aqueous environment. The hydrogel serving as a barrier between the environment and oxide limited the waters movement and penetration, leading to improved stable operation time. More importantly, the light-responsive hydrogel underwent a gel-to-solution transition upon applying ultraviolet (UV) light. The drastic change of the water movement enabled a transient process triggered on demand. Via this encapsulation scheme, we demonstrated fully soluble resistors and resistive random access memory devices with the UV light-triggered transient process. This work provides a new pathway to design transient devices with controllable degradation to meet various requirements of green electronics and biomedical devices.