In recent years, with the deep integration of the Internet of Things (IoT) with regenerative medicine and bioelectronic technology, the concept of the Internet of Bodies (IoB) has garnered widespread attention. As an important extension of the IoT, the IoB connects the human body with intelligent devices, demonstrating enormous potential in medical and non-medical scenarios such as health monitoring, artificial organs, and smart prosthetics. However, traditional IoB systems face a core bottleneck: the physical separation of sensing, memory, and computing functions. Data must be transmitted to the cloud for processing, leading not only to high latency and energy consumption but also posing risks to data privacy and security. Meanwhile, the close interaction between the human body and devices imposes stringent requirements on the biocompatibility, flexibility, and long-term stability of hardware, restricting the practical application and promotion of this technology.
To address these challenges, Professor Wei Ma's team from the State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials at Xi'an Jiaotong University recently published a perspective paper, systematically proposing a new hardware paradigm centered on organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) to achieve integrated sensing–memory–computing (i-SMC) capabilities, enabling the intelligent upgrading of traditional IoB systems. OECTs utilize organic mixed ionic–electronic conductors as active materials, boasting excellent biocompatibility, mechanical flexibility, and unique ion-electron coupling properties that are highly compatible with the human body environment and IoB applications. The device features dual operating modes: in volatile mode, it can serve as a highly sensitive, multimodal biosensor; in non-volatile mode, it functions as a memory device supporting in-memory computing architectures, enabling efficient, low-latency edge intelligence processing. For the first time, the research team proposed three technical pathways for constructing i-SMC OECT arrays: heterogeneous integration, homogeneous integration, and merged integration. Among these, merged integration represents the highest level of integration and the future development direction, aiming to simultaneously complete signal sensing, information storage, and real-time processing within a single array, which can significantly enhance system energy efficiency and integration density. Despite its promising prospects, the technology currently faces challenges such as device stability, biosafety, and supporting auxiliary circuits. In particular, reliable operation in long-term implantation and dynamic physiological environments requires further in-depth research. In the future, this technology is expected to advance key IoB fields including personalized health monitoring, brain–computer interfaces, smart prosthetics, and sophisticated swarm intelligence.
The related work was published in the top international journal Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering under the title "Organic electrochemical transistors for integrated sensing–memory–computing hardware towards intelligent Internet of Bodies". Assistant Professor Bingjun Wang and Assistant Professor Shijie Wang from the State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials at Xi'an Jiaotong University are the co-first authors of the paper, Professor Wei Ma is the corresponding author, and the State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials at Xi'an Jiaotong University is the sole corresponding unit. Collaborators of the paper also include Professor Zhongrui Wang from the Southern University of Science and Technology. This work was supported by projects such as the National Key Research and Development Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Youth Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Paper link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44287-025-00234-x
Chinese
