Tag: Materials

Body Sensors Printed Directly on Skin at Room Temperature

Biomedical sensors typically perform their best when they’re placed in close proximity to the body. While wearables, such as wrist-worn heart rate monitors, are common these days, they are very limited by where they can be placed on the body, have poor signal quality, and are often uncomfortable to wear for extended periods. Now, researchers (Read more...)

Intestinal Organoids Mimic Human Gut

Researchers at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have developed a mini intestine on a chip that closely mimics the morphology and cellular composition of the small intestine. The device could be useful for advancing personalized medicine, drug screening, and even paving the way for researchers to grow new (Read more...)

Graphene Facemask to Deactivate Coronaviruses and Bacteria

Researchers at the City University of Hong Kong have developed a face mask containing laser-induced graphene that can kill bacteria and has demonstrated potential in deactivating coronaviruses. The graphene layer has antibacterial properties and can generate heat when exposed to sunlight, which may underlie its ability to deactivate coronaviruses. (Read more...)

Laser-Controlled Microrobots Small Enough for Injections

Microrobotics researchers have been working for decades, in a seemingly futile attempt, to keep up with the miniaturization that has been achieved in the field of microelectronics. Although rudimentary microscopic robots have been developed, they have failed to take full advantage of conventional silicon electronics and so are limited in their func (Read more...)

Wearable Ozone Therapy Device for Chronic Wound Treatment

Researchers at Purdue University have developed a wearable device that can administer antibacterial ozone gas to chronic wounds to help disinfect them. The technology could allow people to disinfect chronic wounds at home, and would be helpful in cases where wounds have been colonized by drug-resistant bacteria and aren’t responding to antibi (Read more...)

Soft Electronics for Advanced Heart Catheters

Researchers at George Washington University and Northwestern University have developed a new class of soft devices that can provide new functionality for catheters used in cardiac procedures. The new materials are soft electronics, including stretchable sensors and actuators, that when applied to the surface of a catheter system, could greatly assi (Read more...)

Origami Surgical Manipulator to Perform Microsurgeries

Robotic surgical assistants, such as the da Vinci systems from Intuitive Surgical, are now routinely used during laparoscopic procedures to improve operative precision, flexibility, and to manipulate multiple tools at once. Such devices can be quite complex inside and so they tend to be quite large, often taking up much of the space of an [… (Read more...)

Ultrasound Imaging Using Only Piezoelectric Organic LEDs

At North Carolina State University, researchers have performed a remarkable trick, namely producing ultrasound images using nothing but piezoelectric organic light emitting diodes. This may be a big deal, as existing ultrasound devices rely on electronics and image reconstruction algorithms to convert sonic waves captured by transducers into intuit (Read more...)

Wearable Sweat Sensor Made from Microbial Nanocellulose

Researchers in Brazil have developed a wearable sweat sensor made from microbial nanocellulose. The natural polymer provides a breathable interface with the underlying skin and allows sweat to travel through for electrochemical analysis using printed electrodes. The system can measure a wide variety of metabolites and biomarkers present in sweat, a (Read more...)

Pivoting to PPE – A Plastic Manufacturer’s Response to the Covid Pandemic: Interview with Jay Baker, President, Jonestown Plastics

Businesses across industries have felt and reacted to the impact of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. While many have faced challenges to their traditional business models, some have taken those challenges in stride and turned their responses into opportunities for new growth or strategic pivots. Jamestown Plastics, a family-owned, New York-based d (Read more...)

Drawing Biomedical Electronics Directly Onto Skin

Wearable biomedical devices hold the promise of allowing for continuous, remote patient monitoring in all kinds of settings. A variety of vital signs, including heart rate and its variability, body temperature, and the amount of sweat produced, can be measured. The problem is that a lot of these measurements are not particularly accurate when using (Read more...)