Researchers created a material thin enough to be attached to the skin, and flexible enough to "distort and crumple" with movements of the body.
It’s called “ultraflexible organic photonic skin,” and it provides multiple electronic functionalities that it then displays on the surface of the human skin. Thin and flexible, the e-skin was developed by a team of researchers from the University of Tokyo. Professor Takao Someya said in a press release that they designed the e-skin partly because smartphones are too bulky.
According to the press release, “the technology will enable creation of electronic skin (e-skin) displays of blood oxygen levels, e-skin heart rate sensors for athletes, and many other applications.”
Researchers around the world are working toward the goal of integration electronic devices with the human body, for reasons such as enhancing or restoring body functions. However, wearable devices need to be thin and flexible, and most developed so far have required glass that is still millimeters thick, or plastic substrates that have limited flexibility. Micrometer-scale thick flexible organic devices have so far been too unstable to survive in air.
The new e-skin is a high-quality protective film measuring less than 2 micrometers thick. It enables ultrathin, ultraflexible and high performance wearable devices with electronic displays. The material is made by alternating layers of organic (Parylene) and inorganic (Silicon Oxynitrite). Since the resulting film prevented the passage of water vapor and oxygen in the air, the lifetime of the devices went from the few hours seen in other research to several days.
The researchers were also able to attach transparent indium tin oxide electrodes to an ultrathin substrate without causing damage to it, which makes the e-skin display possible.
Using this new protective layer and the ITO electrodes, the researchers created PLEDS, polymer light-emitting diodes, and OPDs, organic photodetectors, which are thin enough to allow them to be attached to the skin, and flexible enough to “distort and crumple” with movements of the body.
The ultrathin PLEDs reduce heat generation and power consumption, which makes them highly suited for attaching directly to the body to provide health stats such as blood oxygen level or pulse rate.
The paper was presented in the April 15 journal Science Advances.
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