Biomedical / Pharmaceutical application
Edible Electronics
Food Industry application
From Ingestible to Edible Electronics
Edible electronics can be considered an evolution of the most traditional concept of ingestible electronics where the proposed devices, besides being suitable for swallowing, are fully digestible within the body, and safely releasable into the environment without need of recollection. Going past the traditional model of electronic devices, ELFO envisions a technology which is not only environmentally friendly, cost-effective, energy-efficient, but also safe for ingestion, and degradable within the body after performing its function by either being digested or even metabolized.
Concept
Mario Caironi
Studied at “Politecnico di Milano” (Milan, Italy) where he obtained his Laurea degree in Electrical Engineering in 2003 and a Ph.D. in Information Technology with honours in 2007. In March 2007 he joined the group of Prof. Henning Sirringhaus at the Cavendish Laboratory (Cambridge, UK) as a post-doctoral research associate. In April 2010 he has been appointed as a Team Leader at the Center for Nano Science and Technology@PoliMi of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Milan, Italy), in 2014 entered the tenure track at the same institution and obtained a tenured researcher position in 2019. Co-author of more than 120 scientific papers in international journals and books. He is a 2014 starting ERC grantee and a 2019 consolidator grantee.
Alessandro Luzio
Received Master degree cum laude (2007) and PhD (2010) in Chemical Engineering and Material Science at Palermo University. As a PhD student, he was involved in Plast_ICs project (main partner STMicroelectronics of Catania), aimed at the realization of Integrated Circuits on plastic substrates, and mainly developed in the laboratories of Consorzio Catania Ricerche. He was also involved in a 7 months period of collaborative research in the Chemistry Department of the Northwestern University, tutored by Professor T. J. Marks and Professor A. Facchetti. He joined the Centre of Nanoscience and Technology of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) in 2011 as a junior PostDoc.
Leonardo Lamanna
Leonardo Lamanna currently is a PostDoc at the IIT. He got BS in Biotechnology and MS in Nanobiotechnology. Afterward, he was employed in the R&D department of the biomedical company Gelesis Inc. focused on the hydrogel synthesis and characterization, and evaluation of drug-device interaction. He then took a PhD position in Engineering of materials and nanotechnology at Salento University with IIT under the supervision of Prof. Massimo De Vittorio and Alessandro Sannino. During the PhD, he was scholar research at the University of South Florida in the department of chemical & biomedical engineering. The aim of his research is the development and application of a new class of polymeric flexible device to be applied in wearables and edible electronics.
Pietro Cataldi
Pietro Cataldi obtained his master in Solid State Physics at the Università di Genova in 2013 with a thesis performed in the Electron dynamiX group of the Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Berlin. He started his Ph.D. in 2014 in the Smart Materials group of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) under the supervision of Dr. Ilker Bayer and Dr. Athanassia Athanassiou. During this period, he developed conductive coatings for flexible electronics and designed nanocomposites with multifunctional features. After the Ph.D., he was sponsored by Ghelfi Ondulati S.P.A. to make cardboards with improved mechanical properties. In September 2018, the researcher started working at the University of Manchester National Graphene Institute with Prof. Ian Kinloch and Dr. Mark Bissett within the EU Graphene Flagship. From November 2020, he is working in Milano in the Printed and Molecular Electronics group of IIT. He is part of the ELFO project whose ultimate goal is to develop a new class of electronic devices that are edible.
Ivan Ilić
Ivan Ilić did his bachelor degree in chemistry at the University of Zagreb (2015), followed by a master in chemistry at the Free University of Berlin (2017). He did his PhD at Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in the department of Prof. Markus Antonietti researching sustianable cathodes for lihtium-ion batteries derived from biowaste. Upon finishing his studies in 2020 he continued working in the same department developing anodes for sodium-ion batteries based on hard carbon materials in the project led by Prof. Martin Oschatz. In 2021 he joined IIT as a part of ELFO project focusing on the development of edible batteries.
Alina Sharova
Alina Sharova was born in Moscow (Russia) in 1994. She received B.S. degree in Nuclear Physics, followed by a M.S. degree in Laser physics and Biophotonics with honours at National Research Nuclear University MEPhI in collaboration with the General Physics Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, in 2016 and 2018, respectively. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Politecnico di Milano in collaboration with the Center for Nano Science and Technology, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Milan. Her current research focuses on edible and biodegradable electronics for the healthcare application.
Fabrizio Ferrarese
Fabrizio Mario Ferrarese was born in Latina (Italy) in 1992. He received B.S. degree in Materials Science at University of Tor Vergata (Rome), followed by a M.S. degree in Materials Science at University of Padua in collaboration with ENEA (Agenzia nazionale per le nuove tecnologie, l'energia e lo sviluppo economico sostenibile) where he did a year of Internship for the thesis project. He is currently a PhD candidate at the Politecnico di Milano in collaboration with the Center for Nano Science and Technology, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Milan, working on the ELFO project investigating the electrical and toxicological properties of edible electronic devices.
Team
Mario Caironi Interview
Mario Caironi has been interviewed by the main Italian News broadcasting, RAI 1
Sweet Electronics
Sweet Electronics: Honey-Gated Complementary Organic Transistors and Circuits Operating in Air
News and Events
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 86429). Overall budget € 1 980 000. ERC Project Info.
Electronic Food (ELFO) seems a concept from the future, food for humanoids or robots; but it’s not. The increasing of wasted and counterfeit food, pathology related to poor nutrition, requires the development of new green technology to track the food supply chain and monitor the wellness of our gastrointestinal tract. ELFO will provide the foundations of new enabling technology for edible electronic systems. The platform will find application in electronic tags for food monitoring, serving public health, and providing at the same time a very powerful tool against counterfeiting and wasting. At the same time, the implementation of a smart edible pill will supply gastrointestinal disease prevention, diagnosis, and therapy. A home healthcare device with the goal to anticipate needs and ensure compliance. Besides, one of the challenges of ELFO is to encourage the public acceptance of such food technology, which is useful for human health and for the environment.