A new dawn has arrived. I'm proud to report that scientists have created an innovative, flexible, sensitive and self-healing electrically conductive hydrogel showing major potential as a replacement skin for burn victims and other medical applications! This new hydrogel was developed by a team at KAUST.
"Our material outperforms all previously reported hydrogels and introduces new functionalities," claims Professor Husam Alshareef of KAUST.
Well this certainly looks promising indeed! I can think of all sorts of applications in which a material like this could be potentially useful.
The material is a composite of the water-containing hydrogel and a metal-carbide compound known as MXene. As well as being able to stretch by more than 3400%, the material can quickly return to its original form and will adhere to many surfaces, including skin. When cut into pieces, it can also quickly mend itself upon reattachment.
Very impressive. The fact that it is so elastistic and self-repairing makes it indeed a sort of futuristic wonder material.
"The material's differing sensitivity to stretching and compression is a breakthrough discovery that adds a new dimension to the sensing capability of hydrogels," says first author, Yizhou Zhang of KAUST.
According to the team, they believe that there is “real potential” for the material in various biosensing and biomedical applications.
But what specifically could it be used for?
Well it seems to be very good for picking up sense changes in the skin and converting them into electronic signals.
The possibilities are almost endless but assuming a thin slab of the material is attached to a user's forehead, for example, it would be able to distinguish between different facial expressions, such as a smile or a frown.
This ability could allow patients with extreme paralysis to control electronic equipment and communicate.
Strips of the material attached to the throat have impressive abilities to convert speech into electronic signals. This might allow people with speech difficulties to be clearly heard.
Other medical applications could include flexible wound coverings that can release drugs to promote healing. These could be applied internally, on diseased organs, in addition to adhering externally to skin. The team also envisions developing a smart material that could monitor the volume and shape of an organ and vary drug release according to signals produced.
All of these applications sound extremely promising. Keep in mind that this is a very crude version of what is sure to become a sort of artificial skin. Beyond synthetic materials creating new skin is possible as well and doctors are also able to use skin grafting techniques which have been around for ages.
What do you guys think about this new wonder material? Can you see it having a lot of potential to give new opportunity to patients in need?
Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.
Thanks for reading!
Source:
Electronic skin stretched to new limits - New Electronics
Image Source:
New Electronics
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