An organic memristor for monitoring embryonic development through digital circuit sensing and image recognition

The assessment of embryo quality is crucial for obtaining healthy live births in assisted reproductive technology (ART). However, the embryo quality assessment mainly relies on subjective morphological observation by doctors, which has obvious limitations. In this work, an organic memristor with an Ag/C₁₅H₈O₆-PEDOT:PSS/Ti structure was developed, which integrates memory, logic circuits, and artificial vision to potentially monitor embryonic development and shows promising capability for screening high-quality embryos. Through mechanism analysis, it was found that C₁₅H₈O₆, as the main component of the functional layer, has abundant hydroxyl and carbon based functional groups, which can accurately regulate ion migration, while PEDOT:PSS has excellent electronic conductivity and film-forming properties. The synergistic effect of the C₁₅H₈O₆-PEDOT:PSS heterojunction endows the memristor with pronounced resistance switching characteristics and synaptic plasticity, enabling it to capture real-time subtle changes in key biological signals in embryonic culture medium through electrical signals. Finally, the system can preliminarily identify embryos with favorable developmental potential and accurately analyze embryonic developmental status via deep learning validation, which demonstrates the feasibility of screening well-developed embryos (7–9 blastomeres). Therefore, this work validates the preliminary feasibility for accurately evaluating embryo quality in assisted reproduction, and paves the way for the intelligent development and potential future applications of memristors in the biomedical field.