Most electronic materials are rigid or contain toxic metals, which makes it tough to design devices that conform to the body or that could be embedded within tissues. One of the few soft plastics that can be used in electronic devices is a polymer called polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), discovered in the 1940s. It has a polar structure that switches its orientation when stimulated by an external voltage—the chemical equivalent of flipping an electronic bit. However, these “ferroelectric” properties are not stable and disappear at higher temperatures. The plastic also requires high voltages to switch polarities, making it more energy intensive to operate.
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