Flexible circuits can be implanted without tearing vital organs
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The hardware in electronics has been a poor fit for the software of human flesh. Rigid circuits do not flex with pliable organs, and hard edges tear soft tissue. This problem has severely limited efforts to improve devices such as artery-clearing catheters by adding computerized control and finesse. Silicon may support the entire computer industry, but it is notoriously brittle.
Yet even the most stubborn materials become flexible if you make them thin enough, says John Rogers, a materials scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is building stretchable electronic sheets, just 10 nanometers thick, for devices that could be placed within or around organs such as the heart and do their jobs without causing harm. Rogers calls them “soft electronics.”
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