Future Electronics: Dr. Karem Lozano Montero on Building Sustainable Devices from the Ground Up

Designing with Disposal in Mind 

The manufacturing chain behind most electronics today is built on silicon, processed through chemical steps that generate significant quantities of hazardous waste. The materials involved, including rare earth metals, are difficult to source and difficult to reclaim.  

"Our goal is to develop novel electronic systems where sustainability is a core priority, driven by the pressing global challenge of e-waste. We need to find ways to manufacture devices that minimize environmental contamination while ensuring we maximize the efficient use of our natural resources." 

The goal is not to replace what the industry currently produces overnight, but to explore what becomes possible when sustainability is built into the design from the start. 

The Case for Additive Manufacturing 

Printed electronics sits at the centre of that exploration. Printing here means depositing functional materials, inks that conduct, insulate, or act as semiconductors, onto a surface through the same basic mechanism used to print a magazine or a T-shirt. The key distinction from conventional electronics is the manufacturing logic, where rather than starting with a full sheet of material and etching away what is not needed, printed electronics build up only what is required. 

"The primary advantage of printed electronics is that it is an additive technology—you deposit material precisely where it is needed. In contrast, traditional silicon-based electronics rely on photolithography, which is inherently subtractive. That process requires multiple steps to etch away and remove excess material, which is precisely where significant waste is generated." 

The additive approach also allows fabrication at lower temperatures and on flexible supporting surfaces (called substrates) such as plastics, opening routes to devices that can conform to curved surfaces. Wearable electronics, and specifically electronics that conform to skin, are a significant part of what the research is working toward. 

Self-Powered Sensors and the Energy Problem 

Lozano Montero's doctoral research pursued that direction directly, focusing on wearable sensors that could function without an external battery. The technical foundation was piezoelectricity: the property of certain materials to generate an electrical charge when mechanically deformed. The effect is familiar in everyday objects, including the igniter in a gas lighter, but at research scale it can be engineered into films thin enough to wear.  

Applied to an ultra-thin, flexible sensor worn at the wrist, this makes it possible to capture biosignals such as the pulse wave from body movement alone. 

"Because these devices are self-powered, they operate independently without requiring an external battery. Once applied, these flexible sensors generate data autonomously. The great advantage of utilizing piezoelectric and triboelectric mechanisms is their dual capability: they can function both as active sensors and as energy harvesters by directly converting mechanical deformation into an electrical signal."  

Connecting these flexible components to the conventional rigid circuits most systems still depend on remains an active challenge across the field. 

ROPALD: A Funded Step Toward Commercialisation 

The current project, ROPALD, addresses a specific fabrication constraint. Atomic layer deposition, or ALD, is a technique for growing extremely thin, uniform films of material onto a surface one atomic layer at a time. However, it is typically performed at temperatures that would damage or destroy the polymer substrates that flexible and biodegradable electronics require. 

ROPALD, which has received Proof of Concept funding from the Research Council of Finland, tests a new approach: integrating a laser directly into the ALD process. 

"By integrating a laser into the ALD process, we can achieve highly selective material deposition. The laser applies localized heat precisely where needed, allowing us to bypass high chamber temperatures. This effectively eliminates the thermal constraints that previously prevented us from using delicate, flexible substrates."  

Selective, laser-assisted deposition removes the need for a chemical etching step, one of the most chemically intensive stages of conventional thin-film processing. The project is being carried out in collaboration with VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, with VTT contributing expertise in transistor fabrication. A successful outcome would be a demonstrated process for fabricating zinc oxide transistors without photolithography, at temperatures compatible with polymer and potentially biodegradable substrates. 

What Biodegradable Actually Requires 

The word biodegradable carries weight in a field where it has rarely been applicable. Lozano Montero is precise about what it currently means. 

"Currently, biodegradable materials cannot match the electrical performance of silicon. Bridging this gap requires intensive material development and exploring unconventional organic compounds. For instance, indigo—the dye commonly used in textiles—has shown great potential as a semiconductor, but it requires further research and optimization before it can be reliably integrated into functional devices." 

For now, the aim is a combination approach that focuses on reducing processing steps that depend on toxic chemistry, expanding the range of substrates that can survive fabrication, and opening space for materials research that has not yet had a viable process to work within. 

The Longer View 

Electronics offers its own cautionary example. The e-waste now accumulating globally is partly the result of end-of-life considerations that were absent from the original design conversation. Lozano Montero draws a line from that to the current moment in AI infrastructure, where energy and water demands are expanding rapidly and often without the same visibility as the capabilities they enable. 

That perspective also shapes how Lozano Montero approaches teaching. Bringing students into a research environment that is actively grappling with these tradeoffs, between performance and sustainability, between what a process can do and what it costs the environment, is itself part of how the next generation of researchers learns to ask the right questions. 

"As researchers, when we develop a new technology, we must look beyond our immediate technical objectives. We have a responsibility to consider all perspectives, evaluating how the innovations we introduce today will ultimately impact society tomorrow." 

The research at the Laboratory for Future Electronics is, among other things, a long-term argument for asking that question earlier.