A new technological approach is needed for the development of emerging electronic components and systems within the Internet of Things (IoT) era. New advancements and innovations are required in architectural design and hybrid systems heterogeneous integration to address the challenge of widespread IoT deployment, its power demands and sustainability. Hybrid chips are one of the emerging technologies that can help overcome the current limitations in terms of energy consumption, performance and sustainability that could shape the future of electronic systems for targeted applications. Hybrid chips combine different materials and manufacturing technologies on the same substrate or package using advanced flexible heterogeneous integration techniques, with the focus of merging the advantages of each unit or technology toward enhanced performance and new levels of emerging functionalities. The categorization of hybrid chips spans across rigid hybrid chips that follow a multi-chiplet approach, semi-flexible chips that integrate flexible units with semi-rigid ones such as thinned silicon integrated circuits, and lastly, flexible chips in which all components are inherently flexible. This perspective article analyzes technical challenges that arise concerning the development of sustainable materials and processing technologies, complex heterogeneous integration, as well as advanced packaging architectures, standardization, and reliability testing. The economic implications for the semiconductor technology transition to hybrid chips is presented in terms of manufacturing costs, economic feasibility, and market readiness. Key insights and future application opportunities are provided, while recent advancements in the field are summarized. This perspective article suggests that by addressing these challenges, hybrid chips have the potential to transform electronic components and systems across a wide range of industries and use case scenario. The advancement of hybrid chip technologies by enhancing the collaboration between industry and academia as well as policymakers will be a crucial part in the realization of required sustainability goals within the worldwide Chips Act initiative, while ensuring the technological progress has the right balance between improved performance and sustainability.

Emerging energy harvesters enabled by 2D materials distributed across different locations of an energy sustainable city, providing power for miniature IoT devices and contributing in on-grid electricity generation.

Mixed-dimensional heterostructures of 2D perfluoroarene perovskite phases are used in resistive switching memories based on perovskite solar cells, showing enhanced performance and stability, which highlights the perspective for self-powered memories.

The heterogeneity of peculiar ions and carriers observed in hybrid organic/inorganic materials is the source of their emergent cross-coupled light and electric field tuneable functions with potential utility in novel opto-electronic applications. Notably, mixed halide perovskites (HPs) have been used as active layers in high performing perovskite solar cells (PSCs) that led to efficient solar energy harvesting. Their rich dynamics enabled by inherently coupled ionic and electronic degrees of freedom have also led to the demonstration of optoelectronic memristors that emulate synaptic- and neural-like dynamics. Consequently, a printable single material stack fabricated at low temperature combining both solar energy harvesting and memristive functionalities attainable at low switching voltages would constitute a transformational breakthrough. In this study, we have demonstrated an inverted PSC with an average power conversion efficiency (PCE) of ∼17% that with appropriate electric biasing procedure exhibits stable resistance switching characteristics at low voltages without losing its PCE performance even after thousands of switching cycles (hereafter this device is termed as MemPVCell). In particular, the MemPVCell demonstrates a high resistance state (HRS) to low resistance state (LRS) ratio of up to 10⁵ and light-tunable switching cycles in the millisecond regime with an endurance of 3 × 10³ cycles with no detectable HRS/LRS ratio drop. During state retention tests, the HRS exhibits no change in time, while the LRS gradually increases resulting in an overall HRS/LRS ratio retention of up to 3600 s with less than a 30% drop of its initial value in the optimum device configuration. Corresponding PCE performance was monitored after using multiple dc resistance switching loops and pulsed endurance cycles, demonstrating full PCE recovery to its initial value within a few minutes of rest. Complementary transient electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurements supported the MemPVCell switching effects. Aiming at further improving the device performance, modifications of MemPVCell's layered structure were investigated, a process that allowed identification of each layer's impact on the parallel photovoltaic and memristive switching characteristics. As a proof of concept towards neuromorphic circuits, basic synaptic functionalities tunable by light are demonstrated such as potentiation and depreciation protocols, short-term plasticity (STP) and long-term plasticity (LTP) effects and associated spike-timing dependent plasticity (STDP).