Flexible Electronics Could Help Put Off-Beat Hearts Back On Rhythm

Co-senior author John Rogers, the Lee J. Flory-Founder Chair in Engineering Innovation and a professor of materials science and engineering at Illinois, and his team will publish their breakthrough in the cover story of the March 24 issue of Science Translational Medicine.

Several treatments are available for hearts that dance to their own tempo, ranging from pacemaker implants to cardiac ablation therapy, a process that selectively targets and destroys clusters of arrhythmic cells. Current techniques require multiple electrodes placed on the tissue in a time-consuming, point-by-point process to construct a patchwork cardiac map. In addition, the difficulty of connecting rigid, flat sensors to soft, curved tissue impedes the electrodes’ ability to monitor and stimulate the heart.

Rogers and his team have built a flexible sensor array that can wrap around the heart to map large areas of tissue at once. The array contains 2,016 silicon nanomembrane transistors, each monitoring electricity coursing through a beating heart.

The Pennsylvania team demonstrated the transistor array on the beating hearts of live pigs, a common model for human hearts. They witnessed a high-resolution, real-time display of the pigs’ pulsing cardiac tissues – something never before possible.

“We believe that this technology may herald a new generation of devices for localizing and treating abnormal heart rhythms,” said co-sernior author Brian Litt, of the University of Pennsylvania.

“This allows us to apply the full power of silicon electronics directly to the tissue,” said Rogers, a renowned researcher in the area of flexible, stretchable electronics. As the first class of flexible electronics that can directly integrate with bodily tissues, “these approaches might have the potential to redefine design strategies for advanced surgical devices, implants, prosthetics and more,” he said.

The biocompatible circuits – the first ones unperturbed by immersion in the body’s salty fluids – represent a culmination of seven years of flexible electronics study by Rogers’ group. The researchers build circuits from ultrathin, single-crystal silicon on a flexible or stretchy substrate, like a sheet of plastic or rubber. The nanometer thinness of the silicon layer makes it possible to bend and fold the normally rigid semiconductor.

“If you can create a circuit that’s compliant and bendable, you can integrate it very effectively with soft surfaces in the body,” such as the irregular, constantly moving curves of the heart, Rogers said.

Collaborations with a theoretical mechanics group at Northwestern University, led by Younggang Huang, yielded important insights into the designs.

The patchwork grid of cardiac sensors adheres to the moist surfaces of the heart on its own, with no need for probes or adhesives, and lifts off easily. The array of hundreds of sensors gives cardiac surgeons a more complete picture of the heart’s electrical activity so they can quickly find and fix any short circuits. In fact, the cardiac device boasts the highest transistor resolution of any class of flexible electronics for non-display applications.

The team’s next step is to adapt the technology for use with non-invasive catheter procedures, Rogers said. The U. of I. and Pennsylvania teams also are exploring applications for the arrays in neuroscience, applying grids to brain surfaces to study conditions of unusual electrical activity, such as epilepsy.

“It sets out a new design paradigm for interfacing electronics to the human body, with a multitude of possible applications in human health,” Rogers said.

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, a National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellowship, the National Institutes of Health and the Klingenstein Foundation.

Editor’s note: To contact John Rogers, call 217-244-4979; e-mail jrogers@illinois.edu

Media Contact

Liz Ahlberg University of Illinois

More Information:

http://www.illinois.edu

All latest news from the category: Physics and Astronomy

This area deals with the fundamental laws and building blocks of nature and how they interact, the properties and the behavior of matter, and research into space and time and their structures.

innovations-report provides in-depth reports and articles on subjects such as astrophysics, laser technologies, nuclear, quantum, particle and solid-state physics, nanotechnologies, planetary research and findings (Mars, Venus) and developments related to the Hubble Telescope.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Evolution of the most powerful ocean current on Earth

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current plays an important part in global overturning circulation, the exchange of heat and CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere, and the stability of Antarctica’s ice sheets….

Memory Self-Test via Smartphone

… Can Identify Early Signs of Alzheimer’s disease. Dedicated memory tests on smartphones enable the detection of “mild cognitive impairment”, a condition that may indicate Alzheimer’s disease, with high accuracy….

The Sound of the Perfect Coating

Fraunhofer IWS Transfers Laser-based Sound Analysis of Surfaces into Industrial Practice with “LAwave”. Sound waves can reveal surface properties. Parameters such as surface or coating quality of components can be…

Partners & Sponsors