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Department of Engineering, ICT and Technologies for Energy and Transport Patent Title Three-dimensional Organic Electrochemical Transi- stor (OECT) and its manufacturing method. Ref. CNR 10510 Assignee(s): CNR CNR Institute: IMEM Main inventor: Matteo Cocuzza Countries: IT Priority date: 22/03/17 Abstract An innovative sensing device has been developed. It is based on the architecture of Organic ElectroChemical Transistor (OECT) with a large exposed surface of the active material (PEDOT-PSS), exploiting a 3D configuration and technology. The high surface area allows high sensitivity and the ability to open new application scenarios for the type of sensor, especially, but not exclusively, in the biomedical field. The device has been realized by means of polymeric Additive Manufacturing (3D printing) technologies and in particular by 3D printing through sintering of thermoplastic powders. The active elements (electrical contacts and sensitive film made of PEDOT:PSS) were integrated by combining micromachining technologies. Background The invention has been conceived within a research activity for the development of innovative electrodes/sensors for the in-vivo acquisition of biological signals. In order to optimize the interfacing and the real-time recording of the acquired data, a three-dimensional structure of an OECT transistor based on semiconductor polymers was hypothesized. In the state of the art of literature, 3D structures are documented only for field effect transistors (OFETs) but none related to 3D OECTs. Technology The 3D OECT is made from thermoplastic (nylon) powders by CO laser sintering of the individual layers of 2 the object. The active elements, which are, the electrical contacts of source, drain and gate and the semiconductor layer in PEDOT: PSS, were obtained respectively by PVD and dip-coating techniques. Advantages and Applications Advantages: low construction cost, higher sensitivity with respect to standard planar configurations, speed and high flexibility of 3D re-design of the device, conformability to different application scenarios. Main applications in the biomedical field (pain therapy, enzymatic monitoring, neuro-transmitters study, ...). Development stage Some prototypes with different geometric features have already been successfully constructed and tested. The current TRL corresponds to value 4. Technological developments and related experiments have already been programmed to achieve a TRL 5 within a short time. 57