ECE Seminar - Soft Electronics to Seamlessly Integrate with Tissues and Organs

Electronics that can seamlessly integrate with human body could have significant impact in medical diagnostic, therapeutics. However, seamless integration is a grand challenge because of the distinct nature between electronics and human body. Conventional electronics are rigid and planar, made out of rigid materials. Human body are soft, deformable and curvilinear, comprised of biological materials, organs and tissues. This talk will introduce our solution to address the challenge through a few emerging electronics and bioelectronics technologies, such as stretchable electronics and most recently rubbery electronics.  By taking the advantage of the enable mechanics of ultra-thin, open-mesh structures, conventionally non-stretchable electronic materials could become mechanically stretchable. Special mechanical structures or architectures accommodate or eliminate mechanical strain in the non-stretchable materials while stretched. Stretchable electronics in this fashion allow integration with skin, organ and tissues. On contrary, rubbery electronics is constructed all based on elastic rubber electronic materials of semiconductors, conductors and dielectrics, which possesses tissue-like softness and mechanical stretchability to allow seamless integration with soft deformable tissues and organs. Rubbery electronic materials and device innovations set the foundation for rubbery electronics. This presentation will feature the development of stretchable electronics and the recent advancement of rubbery electronics and bioelectronics. As platform technologies, stretchable electronics and rubbery electronics could address many scientific challenges in biomedical research and clinical studies.