Researchers at MIT have designed what they're referring to as "the Band-Aid of the future" -- a sticky, stretchy hydrogel that includes temperature sensors, LED lights and drug delivery channels.
The dressing can release medicine in response to body temperature changes, and lights up if medicine is running low. Its stretchy form means it can be applied to flexible areas like elbows or knees, moving with the body and keeping electronics intact at the same time.
The team were able to embed various electronics into the dressing -- including conductive wires, semiconductor chips and the aforementioned LED lights and temperature sensors.
"Electronics are usually hard and dry, but the human body is soft and wet. These two systems have drastically different properties," said Xuanhe Zhao, lead author of the study.
"If you want to put electronics in close contact with the human body for applications such as health care monitoring and drug delivery, it is highly desirable to make the electronic devices soft and stretchable to fit the environment of the human body. That's the motivation for stretchable hydrogel electronics."
Hydrogels were traditionally intended for bonding to hard metals like gold, aluminium and titanium. Typically, they are brittle and unstretchable.
During the course of their research, the team fitted a titanium wire in the hydrogel, forming a transparent conductor that when stretched multiple times was able to produce constant conductivity.
They also embedded several electronic components inside the gel to create a "smart dressing" -- including temperature sensors and drug channels. Even when stretched extremely taut, the dressing was able to consistently monitor temperature and administer drugs.
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