Organic electronics will transform medicine and computing: expert

Eirinet Gómez

La Jornada newspaper
Tuesday, May 6, 2025, p. 6

While computers made with silicon reach their physical and energy limits, organic electronics are emerging as a new technological border capable of transforming both computing and medicine, said Gerardo García Naumis, professor at the Institute of Physics of the UNAM.

In an interview with The dayhe pointed out that this emerging branch of technology could not only go beyond the current limits in the size of the devices, but also to integrate the human body as a functional extension of the nervous system.

We are entering a new stage, in which the biological and technological merger. Its scope will go from the control of neurological diseases to the development of artificial neurons.

The expert explained that in silicon computers, the spectacular progress of the last decades was due to the miniaturization of its components – such as transistors – but that trend has touched background. We are in three nanometers and it is very difficult to reduce them more. In addition, there are problems such as heating, density failures and high energy consumption to function.

In that context, organic electronics arises as a promising alternative, which uses materials such as carbon and graphene, allows to build thinner, flexible, energetically efficient and biocompatible circuits.

“From the energy point of view, the human brain – based on carbon – is much more efficient than a silicon computer,” he explained.

In the computer scope, this approach means the development of neuromorphic computers, capable of processing information more similar to the human brain, with greater energy efficiency. It has also resulted in flexible and biodegradable chips, useful for portable or disposable devices, and its use in soft robots is explored, which can move and interact with their environment more naturally.

Integration to the human body

In organic electronics one of the stars materials is graphene, an extremely thin sheet of carbon atoms with outstanding properties: high electrical, light and resistant conductivity. With it you can make smaller and precise electrodes that are better integrated into the human body.

In the health field, concrete medical applications have already been developed: brain implants with graphene capable of controlling motor functions in children, devices for monitoring and treating real -time epilepsy, and artificial neurons.

Motor functions with carbon devices implemented in the brain have been controlled, capable of reading their activity in real time and restoring neurological functions, making patients walkthe researcher said.

However, the vertiginous advance of this technology also raises a dilemma. “We have examples like Robocop – A disturbing part of this evolution – but there is also the hope of people who regain their view, control epileptic attacks or overcome paralysis. ”

For García Naumis, the ethical discussion is urgent: Who controls this technology? How is it regulated? It can lead to wrong or dangerous decisions. Could lead us to an evolution no longer biological, but directed.

Regarding the role of Mexico, the scientist recognized a lag in applied research, although also a clear potential. In the country there are already groups working in this line. I dedicate myself to the theory, but there are those who address it from other approaches. We lack more impulse because it is a key technology for strategic development.

Looking ahead, García Naumis draws an analogy with the beginnings of humanity: “In the stone age to take a stone meant a revolution, a tool that extended the body. Today technology not only extends the body: it can be part of it.

As always, technology has that duality: a stone can grind corn or be thrown to assault another person. The same will happen with organic electronics. The important thing is how we decide to use it.