2024/5/26 15:11 Imperceptible sensors made from 'electronic spider silk' can be printed directly on human skin | ScienceDaily

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Imperceptible sensors made from 'electronic spider silk' Breaking this hour

can be printed directly on human skin

 Charge Your Laptop in a Minute?
Date: May 24, 2024  Caterpillars Detect Predators by Electricity
Source: University of Cambridge  'Electronic Spider Silk' Printed On Human Skin

Summary: Researchers have developed a method to make adaptive and eco-friendly  Engineered Surfaces Made to Shed Heat
sensors that can be directly and imperceptibly printed onto a wide range of  Innovative Material for Sustainable Building
biological surfaces, whether that's a finger or a flower petal.
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Health & Medicine Researchers have developed a method to make Blueprint

 Skin Care adaptive and eco-friendly sensors that can be

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directly and imperceptibly printed onto a wide
 Cosmetics

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2024/5/26 15:11 Imperceptible sensors made from 'electronic spider silk' can be printed directly on human skin | ScienceDaily
SPACE & TIME
 Psoriasis range of biological surfaces, whether that's a
finger or a flower petal. Stars
Matter & Energy
Sun
The method, developed by researchers from the
 Detectors Astrophysics
University of Cambridge, takes its inspiration from spider
 Electronics silk, which can conform and stick to a range of surfaces. MATTER & ENERGY

These 'spider silks' also incorporate bioelectronics, so Organic Chemistry

 Wearable Technology
that different sensing capabilities can be added to the
Materials Science
Computers & Math 'web'.
Engineering and Construction
The fibres, at least 50 times smaller than a human hair,
 Virtual Reality
are so lightweight that the researchers printed them di‐ COMPUTERS & MATH

 Spintronics Research rectly onto the fluffy seedhead of a dandelion without col‐ Spintronics Research
lapsing its structure. When printed on human skin, the fi‐
 Artificial Intelligence Hacking
bre sensors conform to the skin and expose the sweat
pores, so the wearer doesn't detect their presence. Tests Quantum Computers
RELATED TERMS
of the fibres printed onto a human finger suggest they
Strange & Offbeat
could be used as continuous health monitors.
 Electron microscope
This low-waste and low-emission method for augmenting SPACE & TIME
 Fingerprint living structures could be used in a range of fields, from Birth of Universe's Earliest Galaxies
 Lavender oil healthcare and virtual reality, to electronic textiles and en‐ Observed for First Time
vironmental monitoring. The results are reported in the Planet Hunters Unveil Massive Catalog of
 Computational journal Nature Electronics. Strange Worlds
neuroscience
Although human skin is remarkably sensitive, augmenting First Pictures from Euclid Satellite Reveal
 Pilates Billions of Orphan Stars
it with electronic sensors could fundamentally change
how we interact with the world around us. For example, MATTER & ENERGY
 Science
sensors printed directly onto the skin could be used for Imperceptible Sensors Made from 'Electronic
 Allele continuous health monitoring, for understanding skin sen‐ Spider Silk' Can Be Printed Directly on
Human Skin
sations, or could improve the sensation of 'reality' in gam‐
 Robot
ing or virtual reality application. Strings That Can Vibrate Forever (Kind Of)

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2024/5/26 15:11 Imperceptible sensors made from 'electronic spider silk' can be printed directly on human skin | ScienceDaily

While wearable technologies with embedded sensors, 'Fossilizing' Cracks in Infrastructure Creates
Sealing That Can Even Survive Earthquakes
such as smartwatches, are widely available, these de‐
vices can be uncomfortable, obtrusive and can inhibit the COMPUTERS & MATH

skin's intrinsic sensations. AI Headphones Let Wearer Listen to a Single

Person in a Crowd, by Looking at Them Just
"If you want to accurately sense anything on a biological Once
surface like skin or a leaf, the interface between the de‐
New AI Accurately Predicts Fly Behavior
vice and the surface is vital," said Professor Yan Yan
Shery Huang from Cambridge's Department of 3D Printing Robot Creates Extreme Shock-
Absorbing Shape, With Help of AI
Engineering, who led the research. "We also want bio‐
electronics that are completely imperceptible to the user,
so they don't in any way interfere with how the user inter‐
acts with the world, and we want them to be sustainable
and low waste."

There are multiple methods for making wearable sensors,

but these all have drawbacks. Flexible electronics, for ex‐
ample, are normally printed on plastic films that don't al‐
low gas or moisture to pass through, so it would be like
wrapping your skin in cling film. Other researchers have
recently developed flexible electronics that are gas-per‐
meable, like artificial skins, but these still interfere with
normal sensation, and rely on energy- and waste-inten‐
sive manufacturing techniques.

3D printing is another potential route for bioelectronics

since it is less wasteful than other production methods,
but leads to thicker devices that can interfere with normal
behaviour. Spinning electronic fibres results in devices
that are imperceptible to the user, but without a high de‐
gree of sensitivity or sophistication, and they're difficult to
transfer onto the object in question.

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2024/5/26 15:11 Imperceptible sensors made from 'electronic spider silk' can be printed directly on human skin | ScienceDaily

Now, the Cambridge-led team has developed a new way

of making high-performance bioelectronics that can be
customised to a wide range of biological surfaces, from a
fingertip to the fluffy seedhead of a dandelion, by printing
them directly onto that surface. Their technique takes its
inspiration in part from spiders, who create sophisticated
and strong web structures adapted to their environment,
using minimal material.

The researchers spun their bioelectronic 'spider silk' from

PEDOT:PSS (a biocompatible conducting polymer),
hyaluronic acid and polyethylene oxide. The high-perfor‐
mance fibres were produced from water-based solution at
room temperature, which enabled the researchers to con‐
trol the 'spinnability' of the fibres. The researchers then
designed an orbital spinning approach to allow the fibres
to morph to living surfaces, even down to microstructures
such as fingerprints.
Tests of the bioelectronic fibres, on surfaces including hu‐
man fingers and dandelion seedheads, showed that they
provided high-quality sensor performance while remain‐
ing imperceptible to the host.

"Our spinning approach allows the bioelectronic fibres to

follow the anatomy of different shapes, at both the micro
and macro scale, without the need for any image recogni‐
tion," said Andy Wang, the first author of the paper. "It
opens up a whole different angle in terms of how sustain‐
able electronics and sensors can be made. It's a much
easier way to produce large area sensors."

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2024/5/26 15:11 Imperceptible sensors made from 'electronic spider silk' can be printed directly on human skin | ScienceDaily

Most high-resolution sensors are made in an industrial

cleanroom and require toxic chemicals in a multi-step and
energy-intensive fabrication process. The Cambridge-de‐
veloped sensors can be made anywhere and use a tiny
fraction of the energy that regular sensors require.

The bioelectronic fibres, which are repairable, can be sim‐

ply washed away when they have reached the end of
their useful lifetime, and generate less than a single mil‐
ligram of waste: by comparison, a typical single load of
laundry produces between 600 and 1500 milligrams of fi‐
bre waste.

"Using our simple fabrication technique, we can put sen‐

sors almost anywhere and repair them where and when
they need it, without needing a big printing machine or a
centralised manufacturing facility," said Huang. "These
sensors can be made on-demand, right where they're
needed, and produce minimal waste and emissions."

The researchers say their devices could be used in ap‐

plications from health monitoring and virtual reality, to
precision agriculture and environmental monitoring. In fu‐
ture, other functional materials could be incorporated into
this fibre printing method, to build integrated fibre sen‐
sors for augmenting the living systems with display, com‐
putation, and energy conversion functions. The research
is being commercialised with the support of Cambridge
Enterprise, the University's commercialisation arm.

The research was supported in part by the European

Research Council, Wellcome, the Royal Society, and the
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council

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2024/5/26 15:11 Imperceptible sensors made from 'electronic spider silk' can be printed directly on human skin | ScienceDaily

(BBSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Cambridge. The original text of this story is licensed
under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
License. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Related Multimedia:

Sensors printed on human fingers

Journal Reference:

1. Wenyu Wang, Yifei Pan, Yuan Shui, Tawfique Hasan, Iek Man Lei, Stanley Gong
Sheng Ka, Thierry Savin, Santiago Velasco-Bosom, Yang Cao, Susannah B. P.
McLaren, Yuze Cao, Fengzhu Xiong, George G. Malliaras, Yan Yan Shery Huang.
Imperceptible augmentation of living systems with organic bioelectronic fibres.
Nature Electronics, 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41928-024-01174-4

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University of Cambridge. "Imperceptible sensors made from 'electronic spider silk' can
be printed directly on human skin." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 24 May 2024. <www.sci‐
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