A new stretchy hydrogel can be embedded with various electronics. Zhao’s team notes that conductive wires, semiconductor chips and LED lights are also employed in this newfangled wound dressing.
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The sticky, gel-like material can incorporate temperature sensors, LED lights or other miniaturized electronics, as well as drug delivery reservoirs or channels.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) released a new hydrogel last month; a water-based, flexible, smart wound dressing that is capable of holding small electronics to read skin temperature and automatically deliver the drugs required by patients.
An array of LED lights also was embedded in hyrdogel and, when attached to the body, including while being stretched and deformed around areas like the knee and elbow, the lights continued to work.
The key to the design is a hydrogel matrix designed by Xuanhe Zhao, the Robert N. Noyce Career Development Associate Professor in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. The hydrogel matrix, a rubbery material consisting mostly of water, is the main component of the stretchable band-aid which is created to strongly bond with gold, aluminum, titanium, glass ceramics and silicon.
Though the study proposed a wound-care application, Zhao speculated that the technology could also be applied to implanted glucose monitors and neural probes, somewhere down the road.
While the human body is made of soft tissue and is a rather wet environment, electronics don’t fit too well due to the difference in properties. “These two systems have drastically different properties”, Zhao says. “That’s the motivation for stretchable hydrogel electronics”, Zhao explained.
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The hydrogel could be used as a biocompatible delivery vehicle for embedding electronics, such as glucose sensors, in the body.
Historically hydrogels have been used to coat glucose sensors in order to mitigate the immune response however they are very brittle and easily detached during motion.
They’re often used as degradable biomaterials at the current stage. “If you want to make an electronic device out of hydrogels, you need to think of long-term stability of the hydrogels and interfaces”.
The team also worked to develop a method for their hydrogel to bond strongly with various non-porous surfaces.
In tests, the team found they could stretch the encapsulated wire multiple times while it retained its electrical conductivity.
MIT Researchers have designed a flexible ‘Band-Aid of the future with smart sensors that can tell when a patient’s temperature rises, deliver medicines and light up when reservoirs are low. Mock drugs can be released at various locations on demand, based on the measured temperatures.
Describing the dressing in Advanced Materials, the researchers say their bandage can deliver different drugs to different segments of skin in relation to their respective temperature, with medication flowing through pathways in the gel created via tube insertions or drilled holes.
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The team envisions their hydrogel in applications such as stretchable, on-demand medical treatment for burns and other skin conditions.
