MIT

Researchers at MIT have designed what they're referring to as "the Band-Aid of the future" -- a sticky, stretchy hydrogel that includes temperature sensors, LED lights and drug delivery channels.

The dressing can release medicine in response to body temperature changes, and lights up if medicine is running low. Its stretchy form means it can be applied to flexible areas like elbows or knees, moving with the body and keeping electronics intact at the same time.


The team were able to embed various electronics into the dressing -- including conductive wires, semiconductor chips and the aforementioned LED lights and temperature sensors.

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Hydrogels were traditionally intended for bonding to hard metals like gold, aluminium and titanium. Typically, they are brittle and unstretchable.


During the course of their research, the team fitted a titanium wire in the hydrogel, forming a transparent conductor that when stretched multiple times was able to produce constant conductivity.

They also embedded several electronic components inside the gel to create a "smart dressing" -- including temperature sensors and drug channels. Even when stretched extremely taut, the dressing was able to consistently monitor temperature and administer drugs.

The team hope their dressing could be immediately used to treat burns. Long term, they hope hydrogel could be used to deliver tiny electronics inside the body -- glucose sensors or neural probes, for example. "The brain is a bowl of Jell-O," said Zhao. "Currently, researchers are trying different soft materials to achieve long-term biocompatibility of neural devices. With collaborators, we are proposing to use robust hydrogel as an ideal material for neural devices, because the hydrogel can be designed to possess similar mechanical and physiological properties as the brain."