Organic Bioelectronics, aiming at developing a full set of tools for interfacing biological and artificial systems, is becoming one of the future, most promising, applicative fields for organic semiconductors: to this aim, a variety of materials and devices are being developed with the aim of obtaining low cost, large area systems assembled with very simple fabrication techniques.
The approach we are presenting starts from the observation that in the wide variety of applications that Bioelectronics is aiming at there is a common need for technologies enabling the sensing of several physico/chemical parameters, in order to provide a complete information about the system to monitor. This is particularly relevant in sensing tasks related to monitoring living cells. Very recently, a fully plastic organic field effect device, named OCMFET (Organic Charge Modulated FET) has been demonstrated as a powerful tool for monitoring the cell electrical activity. At the same time, this same device may be employed for measuring several other variables, as temperature, pH, pressure etc. The realization of low cost, plastic, smart substrates for cell cultures is therefore a realistic perspective for these devices.