Researchers report flexible on-skin electronics made from pencil traces on a paper substrate. Flexible on-skin electronics are typically made from organic, nanoscale, and other components with expensive raw materials and sophisticated fabrication processes. However, in their basic form, such flexible electronics are composed of a conductive material and flexible substrate designed to glean useful biomedical information from the skin surface. Zheng Yan and colleagues explored the potential of pencil and paper as conductive materials and substrates of flexible on-skin electronics. Pencil traces on paper lay down a line of graphite that can serve as a conducting trace, with a wide variety of applications. The authors developed electrode designs that could record data such as temperature, heart rate, respiratory rate, and electrocardiogram signals. The authors also produced sensors that can collect information from sweat, including pH, uric acid, and glucose levels. Another design harvested electrical energy from ambient humidity, sustaining a voltage up to 480 mV for more than 2 hours, and provided stimulation electricity sufficient to potentially enable transdermal drug delivery. Validation experiments showed the quality of recorded signals to be comparable to traditional instruments. According to the authors, the results suggest a method for making inexpensive multifunctional on-skin electronics, which could be applied in low-resource medical environments.
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Article #20-08422: "Pencil-paper on-skin electronics," by Yadong Xu et al.
MEDIA CONTACT: Zheng Yan, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO; e-mail: < yanzheng@missouri.edu >
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences