An interdisciplinary team from multiple institutions in South Korea has recently developed a novel stretchable memory device that can be applied to the skin and used to monitor heart rate, which they believe outpaces current biosensor technology in this field.
With bio-data capturing devices on the rise in popular culture, researchers are working to increase efficiency and stability in these devices. The main problem with the current technologies is that the devices do not sit close enough to the skin. To combat this issues, the researchers have developed a new array that can be applied directly to the skin and can withstand stretching.
The memory array is nonvolatile and made from fully multiplexed silicon and nanocrystal floating gates. The resulting device architecture built by the team is approximately the size of a human thumb and consists of two main parts, an array of ECG electrodes that are used for reading the heart rate, and the memory array—the two are connected together by a bit of electronics that also serve as amplifiers. The result is a patch-like device that is able to be stretched because the membrane material between each of the tiny squares circuits that make up both of the arrays, is flexible.
