Cancer, diabetes and heart disease are among the leading causes of disability and death, creating the need for a long-term, in-home monitoring solution that can detect these chronic diseases early and enable timely interventions. Now, a team of researchers may have developed such a solution by creating an ultrasoft “skin-like” material that is breathable as well as stretchable. The material could be used for developing an on-skin, wearable bioelectronic device that can simultaneously track multiple vital signs such as blood pressure, electrical heart activity and skin hydration.

Made from a liquid-metal elastomer composite, the key feature of the material developed by researchers at University of Missouri (MU, Columbia, MO, USA) is its skin-like soft properties. The material has integrated antibacterial and antiviral properties to prevent the formation of harmful pathogens on the surface of the skin below the device from extended use. Other researchers have developed similar designs for liquid-metal elastomer composites, although the new approach is a novel one because the breathable “porous” material prevents the liquid metal from leaking out when the material is stretched as the human body moves. The researchers developed the material by building on their existing proof of concept, as demonstrated by their previous work that included a heart monitor presently under development. The researchers hope that in the future, the biological data gathered by the device could be wirelessly transmitted to a smartphone or similar electronics to be shared with medical professionals.

“Our overall goal is to help improve the long-term biocompatibility and the long-lasting accuracy of wearable bioelectronics through the innovation of this fundamental porous material which has many novel properties,” said Zheng Yan, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. “It is ultrasoft and ultra-stretchable, so when the device is worn on the human body, it will be mechanically imperceptible to the user. You cannot feel it, and you will likely forget about it. This is because people can feel about 20 kilopascals or more of pressure when something is stretched on their skin, and this material creates less pressure than that.” 

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