The striking flexibility of organic electronics means that they hold immense promise for use in biomedical devices such as catheters. But most organic materials melt or degrade when heated to the temperatures needed to sterilize materials, as required for medical use.

Takeo Someya at the University of Tokyo and his colleagues have built a flexible organic thin-film transistor that is heat resistant and works at the low voltages that might be used in the human body. They heated the device, which consists of a thiophene-based aromatic active layer with aluminium oxide and alkyl phosphonic acid insulating layers, up to 150 °C and found that its electrical characteristics remained stable.

Nature Commun. 3, 723 (2012)