Ultra-conformal drawn-on-skin electronics for multifunctional motion artifact-free sensing and point-of-care treatment

By Faheem Ershad, Anish Thukral, J. Yue, Phillip Comeaux, Yuntao Lu, Hyunseok Shim, K. Sim, Nam-In Kim, Zhoulyu Rao, R. Guevara and 9 more. Nature Communications, 2020

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An accurate extraction of physiological and physical signals from human skin is crucial for health monitoring, disease prevention, and treatment. Recent advances in wearable bioelectronics directly embedded to the epidermal surface are a promising solution for future epidermal sensing. However, the existing wearable bioelectronics are susceptible to motion artifacts as they lack proper adhesion and conformal interfacing with the skin during motion. Here, we present ultra-conformal, customizable, and deformable drawn-on-skin electronics, which is robust to motion due to strong adhesion and ultra-conformality of the electronic inks drawn directly on skin. Electronic inks, including conductors, semiconductors, and dielectrics, are drawn on-demand in a freeform manner to develop devices, such as transistors, strain sensors, temperature sensors, heaters, skin hydration sensors, and electrophysiological sensors. Electrophysiological signal monitoring during motion shows drawn-on-skin electronics’ immunity to motion artifacts. Additionally, electrical stimulation based on drawn-on-skin electronics demonstrates accelerated healing of skin wounds. Designing efficient wearable bioelectronics for health monitoring, disease prevention, and treatment, remains a challenge. Here, the authors demonstrate an ultra-conformal, customizable and deformable drawn-on-skin electronics which is robust to motion artifacts and resistant to physical damage.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6fb9517a707d935868b5eb4e9d55acfe97e1678b