An optical image of an electronic device in a complex deformation mode. (Credit: Image courtesy of Northwestern University)

Professors Yonggang Huang (Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science) and John Rogers (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) have created circuits that can be twisted. Such electronics could be used in places where flat, unbending electronics would fail, like on the human body.

Electronic components historically have been flat and unbendable because silicon, the principal component of all electronics, is brittle and inflexible. Any significant bending or stretching renders an electronic device useless.

Huang and Rogers developed a method to fabricate stretchable electronics that increases the stretching range (as much as 140 percent) and allows the user to subject circuits to extreme twisting. The researchers expect the emerging technology to advance flexible sensors, transmitters, photovoltaic and microfluidic devices, and other applications, including wearable health monitors for temperature, pulse rate, blood oximetry, etc.; cardiac monitors for locating and treating arrhythmias; and neural monitors for monitoring brain disorders, cognition and, possibly, as a machine-human interface.

For more on this development, watch for the September 2009 issue of Medical Design, medicaldesign.com