Soft Material-Enabled, Flexible Hybrid Electronics for Medicine, Healthcare, and Human-Machine Interfaces

Abstract

Flexible hybrid electronics (FHE), designed in wearable and implantable configurations, have enormous applications in advanced healthcare, rapid disease diagnostics, and persistent human-machine interfaces. Soft, contoured geometries and time-dynamic deformation of the targeted tissues require high flexibility and stretchability of the integrated bioelectronics. Recent progress in developing and engineering soft materials has provided a unique opportunity to design various types of mechanically compliant and deformable systems. Here, we summarize the required properties of soft materials and their characteristics for configuring sensing and substrate components in wearable and implantable devices and systems. Details of functionality and sensitivity of the recently developed FHE are discussed with the application areas in medicine, healthcare, and machine interactions. This review concludes with a discussion on limitations of current materials, key requirements for next generation materials, and new application areas.

Wireless, intraoral hybrid electronics for real-time quantification of sodium intake toward hypertension management

“…Studied microporous membrane provides a great structural platform for a biocompatible interface with the tissue. Overall, this paper reports fundamental strategies to design wireless, user-comfortable, hybrid stretchable electronics for a broad range of biomedical applications (42). Future study could focus on addition of a microvolume sensor to accurately quantify daily sodium intake and further miniaturization of the electronics to house an array of multibiochemical sensors to monitor a variety of analytes in oral intake.…”

“…wireless intraoral system | stretchable hybrid electronics | sodium intake quantification | hypertension management O ver the last decade, there have been rapid advances in the development of noninvasive, portable, and wearable healthcare devices (1,2), including temperature sensors (3), glucose monitors (4), fall detectors (5), and electronic skins (6). These devices can help users achieve healthy independent living with minimal outside support.…”

Soft Material-Enabled Electronics for Medicine, Healthcare, and Human-Machine Interfaces

“…The overall scope of key materials, enabling technologies, and significant applications of soft material-enabled wearable electronics is detailed in "Soft Material-Enabled, Flexible Hybrid Electronics for Medicine, Healthcare, and Human-Machine Interfaces" [1]. Substrate and sensing material properties are discussed, along with details of the applications for each material.…”

Highly Robust Flexible Ferroelectric Field Effect Transistors Operable at High Temperature with Low‐Power Consumption

“…Flexible electronics have captured tremendous attention in recent years due to their potential applications in wearable devices, implanted systems, and brain–machine interfaces, and it is often desired that they possess multiple functionalities, tunable properties, low‐power consumption, as well as mechanical reliability and performance robustness, even under demanding environment. One particular system of extensive interests is flexible ferroelectric field effect transistors (FeFETs), which are capable of both low power sensing and nonvolatile data storage that are attractive for smart wearable devices, and the ability to continuously tune and program their multiple conduction states makes them promising for emerging memristor applications as well, e.g., as artificial synapses in neuromorphic computing .…”