Technology could enable new health diagnostics and achieve Elon Musk's goal of integrating with artificial intelligence

Scientists have discovered a ground-breaking bio-synthetic material that they claim can be used to merge artificial intelligence with the human brain.

The breakthrough, presented today at the American Chemical Society Fall 2020 virtual expo, is a major step towards integrating electronics with the body to create part human, part robotic "cyborg" beings.

Connecting electronics to human tissue has been a major challenge due to traditional materials like gold, silicon and steel causing scarring when implanted.

Scars not only cause damage but also interrupt electrical signals flowing between computers and muscle or brain tissue. The researchers from the University of Delaware were able to overcome this after various types of polymers.

"We got the idea for this project because we were trying to interface rigid organic microelectrodes with the brain, but brains are made out of organic, salty, live materials," said Dr David Martin, who led the study.

"It wasn't working well, so we thought there must be a better way. We started looking at organic electronic materials like conjugated polymers that were being used in non-biological devices. We found a chemically stable example that was sold commercially as an antistatic coating for electronic displays."