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The brain is soft and electronics are stiff, which can make combining the two challenging, such as when neuroscientists implant electrodes to measure brain activity and perhaps deliver tiny jolts of electricity for pain relief or other purposes.
Chemical engineer Zhenan Bao is trying to change that. For more than a decade, her lab has been working to make electronics soft and flexible so that they feel and operate almost like a second skin. Along the way, the team has started to focus on making brittle plastics that can conduct electricity more elastic.
Now in Science Advances, Bao's team describes how they took one such brittle plastic and modified it chemically to make it as bendable as a rubber band, while slightly enhancing its electrical conductivity. The result is a soft, flexible electrode that is compatible with our supple and sensitive nerves.
"This flexible electrode opens up many new, exciting possibilities down the road for brain interfaces and other implantable electronics," said Bao, a professor of chemical engineering. "Here, we have a new material with uncompromised electrical performance and high stretchability."
The material is still a laboratory prototype, but the team hopes to develop it as part of their long-term focus on creating flexible materials that interface with the human body.
More information: Yue Wang et al. A highly stretchable, transparent, and conductive polymer, Science Advances (2017). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1602076
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday March 16 2017, @03:38AM (1 child)
I love the Hammond organ, and I love more that Hammond hated the Leslie Rotating Speaker.
The two go together like pissin' and the wind, and eventually became inseparable.
But like the ending of Metal Gear Solid 4, the combination of the pair mutated into something that neither of their creators could have forseen. You had electric organists ranging from small-church choirs to big time jazz-organists alike using Leslies, and the original purpose of the Leslie was to help small churches simulate the stereophonic effect of large pipe organs. But that mutated into a distinct sound all its own.
America, fuck yeah. [youtube.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @05:41AM
"To each his own", said the old woman as she kissed the cow.
When I got through working on my car, I expected to have to clean schmutz off my tools.
When I bought my electronics tools, I never expected to be wiping oil off of them.
You can have Hammonds.
Hammonds have a distinctive sound and some folks prefer that sound (because it's what they heard first).
It doesn't, however, sound anything like a pipe organ.
I typically just say "Hammond"; adding "organ" is a slap in the face to the builders of real organs.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]