Science & Technology tattoos are often seen as a symbol of fashion, almost everywhere. So if you can implant a smart digital tattoo into your body, it doesn't look cool, and it can also perform some useful tasks, such as unlocking a car or mobile phone password, which has really become a reality. An engineering team at the University of Texas at Austin, Cokerell School of Engineering, developed a way to quickly print low-cost disposable wearable miniature biosensors. This type of sensor can stick to the patient's skin - it looks like a tattoo - to monitor vital patient vital signs. Soon, this wearable sensor is expected to be put into use in the hospital instead of a heart rate monitor or a pulse oximeter to educate elderly patients with heart disease and other diseases as well as patients of other ages.
In recent years, wearable devices can be described as the limelight, the market has grown rapidly, and the development momentum is fierce. Wearable technology is also a simple transition technology. It must and soon will come from outside our body into the body. Needless to say, this will be the future of wearable devices and the next big frontier technology.
The engineer team at the College of Engineering in Cokerell was led by Nanshu Lu (transliteration). As they began to study such tattoo-type wearable sensors, there were already many tiny smart sensors on the market. However, these sensors are flawed. Lu Nanshu said that the problem with existing sensors is not that the technology itself, but the manufacturing process, the entire manufacturing process is not only time-consuming and costly, but also costly. These deficiencies make it cheaper to make disposable sensors that monitor health temporarily. This is almost impossible. She said: "If it is a tattoo-type electronic device, no one wants to reuse it, even including you. Therefore, one-time use is a key feature."
Prior to the appearance of such tattoo-type sensors, similar sensors were manufactured using conventional engineering methods, using mechanical components and metal circuits, and then combined with elastic adhesives. The whole process not only takes a lot of time, but also costs a lot. In order to solve these problems, the College of Engineering of Kokler decided to develop other ways to make the fragile electronic components not only soft and flexible, but also sticky. Using the principles of 3D printing technology, they found a way to use a mechanical cutter to engrave the desired structure on the metal sheet instead of using the mold to make electronic components.
Lu Nanshu pointed out: "We are starting to look for metal sheets that can be superimposed on polymer sheets, basically like aluminum foil glued to double-sided tape." Eventually, they found this on the shelf of home improvement products in hardware stores. A cheap and flexible metal. The whole search process is incredibly easy. In the final developed structure, they used a metal-like polymer-like element as a heat-reflecting layer. Lu Nanshu said: “We invented a manufacturing process that can cut out the required structures on these sheets and then remove the unwanted parts. The rest is printed on medical tape or tattoo adhesives. ”
The entire printing process takes about 20 minutes. Unlike the previous approach to manufacturing flexible electronic components, this manufacturing process produced very little waste and did not require specialized laboratories. Lu Nanshu expressed the desire to control the manufacturing cost of each wearable sensor at around US$1. The team’s goal is to integrate multiple sensors and antennas into a single credit card-sized patch that can monitor vital vital signs in about a week while monitoring wireless transmissions to doctors and patients’ PCs, tablets, and smartphones. data.
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