An electronic tattoo that monitors our body activities (Science article by John Rogers)

Epidermal Electronics

1. Dae-Hyeong Kim¹,*, 
2. Nanshu Lu¹,*, 
3. Rui Ma²,*, 
4. Yun-Soung Kim¹, 
5. Rak-Hwan Kim¹, 
6. Shuodao Wang³, 
7. Jian Wu³,
8. Sang Min Won¹, 
9. Hu Tao⁴, 
10. Ahmad Islam¹, 
11. Ki Jun Yu¹, 
12. Tae-il Kim¹, 
13. Raeed Chowdhury², 
14. Ming Ying¹, 
15. Lizhi Xu¹,
16. Ming Li³,⁶, 
17. Hyun-Joong Chung¹, 
18. Hohyun Keum¹, 
19. Martin McCormick², 
20. Ping Liu⁵, 
21. Yong-Wei Zhang⁵,
22. Fiorenzo G. Omenetto⁴, 
23. Yonggang Huang³, 
24. Todd Coleman², 
25. John A. Rogers¹,†

Science 12 August 2011: 
Vol. 333 no. 6044 pp. 838-843 
DOI: 10.1126/science.1206157

ABSTRACT

An electronic tattoo sticking  on to skin 

We report classes of electronic systems that achieve thicknesses, effective elastic moduli, bending stiffnesses, and areal mass densities matched to the epidermis. Unlike traditional wafer-based technologies, laminating such devices onto the skin leads to conformal contact and adequate adhesion based on van der Waals interactions alone, in a manner that is mechanically invisible to the user. We describe systems incorporating electrophysiological, temperature, and strain sensors, as well as transistors, light-emitting diodes, photodetectors, radio frequency inductors, capacitors, oscillators, and rectifying diodes. Solar cells and wireless coils provide options for power supply. We used this type of technology to measure electrical activity produced by the heart, brain, and skeletal muscles and show that the resulting data contain sufficient information for an unusual type of computer game controller.