Degradable and Dissolvable Thin-Film Materials for the Applications of New-Generation Environmental-Friendly Electronic Devices

The environmental pollution generated by electronic waste (e-waste), waste-gas, and wastewater restricts the sustainable development of society. Environmental-friendly electronics made of degradable, resorbable, and compatible thin-film materials were utilized and explored, which was beneficial for e-waste dissolution and sustainable development. In this paper, we present a literature review about the development of various degradable and disposable thin-films for electronic applications. The corresponding preparation methods were simply reviewed and one of the most exciting and promising methods was discussed: Printing electronics technology. After a short introduction, detailed applications in the environment sensors and eco-friendly devices based on these degradable and compatible thin-films were mainly reviewed, finalizing with the main conclusions and promising perspectives. Furthermore, the future on these upcoming environmental-friendly electronic devices are proposed and prospected, especially on resistive switching devices, showing great potential applications in artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Thing (IoT). These resistive switching devices combine the functions of storage and computations, which can complement the off-shelf computing based on the von Neumann architecture and advance the development of the AI.