Abstract

Soft Electronics For Noninvasive Healthcare: From the Skin to Below the Skin

Sheng Xu, Assistant Professor, University of California, San Diego

Soft electronic devices that can acquire vital signs from the human body represent an important trend for healthcare. Combined strategies of materials design and advanced microfabrication allow the integration of a variety of components and devices on a stretchable platform, resulting in systems with minimal constraints on the human body. We have demonstrated a skin-mounted multichannel health monitor that can sense local field potentials, temperature, strain, acceleration, and body orientation. Integrating ultrasonic transducers on this stretchable platform adds a third dimension to the detection range by launching ultrasound waves that reach well underneath the skin. The ultrasound waves allow capturing a wide range of dynamic events in deep tissues such as blood pressure and blood flow waveforms in central arteries and veins. This technology holds profound implications for continuous and noninvasive sensing, diagnosis, and treatment of chronic diseases.