Epidermal Electronics
- Dae-Hyeong Kim1,*,
- Nanshu Lu1,*,
- Rui Ma2,*,
- Yun-Soung Kim1,
- Rak-Hwan Kim1,
- Shuodao Wang3,
- Jian Wu3,
- Sang Min Won1,
- Hu Tao4,
- Ahmad Islam1,
- Ki Jun Yu1,
- Tae-il Kim1,
- Raeed Chowdhury2,
- Ming Ying1,
- Lizhi Xu1,
- Ming Li3,6,
- Hyun-Joong Chung1,
- Hohyun Keum1,
- Martin McCormick2,
- Ping Liu5,
- Yong-Wei Zhang5,
- Fiorenzo G. Omenetto4,
- Yonggang Huang3,
- Todd Coleman2,
- John A. Rogers1,†
- 1Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, and Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
- 2Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Coordinated Science Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
- 3Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
- 4Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155, USA.
- 5Institute of High Performance Computing, 1 Fusionopolis Way, #16-16 Connexis, 138632, Singapore.
- 6State Key Laboratory of Structural Analysis for Industrial Equipment, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China.
- ↵†To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jrogers{at}uiuc.edu
-
↵* These authors contributed equally to this work.
Abstract
We report classes of electronic systems that achieve thicknesses, effective elastic moduli, bending stiffnesses, and areal mass densities matched to the epidermis. Unlike traditional wafer-based technologies, laminating such devices onto the skin leads to conformal contact and adequate adhesion based on van der Waals interactions alone, in a manner that is mechanically invisible to the user. We describe systems incorporating electrophysiological, temperature, and strain sensors, as well as transistors, light-emitting diodes, photodetectors, radio frequency inductors, capacitors, oscillators, and rectifying diodes. Solar cells and wireless coils provide options for power supply. We used this type of technology to measure electrical activity produced by the heart, brain, and skeletal muscles and show that the resulting data contain sufficient information for an unusual type of computer game controller.
- Received for publication 28 March 2011.
- Accepted for publication 10 June 2011.
