Published in ScienceNOW, 11 Aug 2011
He may have had a laser in his watch and a radio in his lighter, but even James Bond didn’t sport gadgets tattooed to his skin. Now he could, thanks to the development of ultrathin electronics that can be placed on the skin as easily as a temporary tattoo. The researchers hope the new devices will pave the way for sensors that monitor heart and brain activity without bulky equipment, or perhaps computers that operate via the subtlest voice commands or body movement.
Stretchy and bendy electronics have been around for a few years. One approach is to write circuits onto materials that are already flexible, such as ink on paper, so gadgets can be folded and put away. Another is to make the circuits themselves flexible. In 2008, for example, engineers at the University of Tokyo created a conductive materialthat looked a bit like a fishnet stocking. Made of carbon nanotubes and rubber, it could stretch by more than a third of its natural length, possibly enough to make robots become more agile. […]
The rest of this article is available here.