Electronic Ink - A Cyberpunk Vision

[fiat_knox]

The above, somewhat sensual, video clip comes from Phillips. They have an idea of what could some day be possible for tattoos and other items of organic electronics.

Silicon-silk implantable electronics is covered in this article, and it is followed up with another article on the development of silicon LEDs which could be implanted as photonic, glowing, potentially animated tattoos.

These articles, and the video, were linked to a Cyberpunk Review article here.

From The Cyberpunk Review:

The Illustrated Man. Tattoos have mostly been static graphics, limited in their usefulness in communication certain info. But researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have now come up with LED tattoos that can turn your skin into a living screen. And to help get this tech inside you, the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana have found a way to use silk to implant the circuits.

I initially reported on the silk implantation in the forums, while Kenryouku_One gets props for the follow up on how the tech is being used to implant the LEDs. Meanwhile, Wired.com likens this technical cyber-marriage to Ray Bradbury’s book about a man with animated tattoos covering his body. Now I need to find this book and review it for you…

Silk has been used before and is approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for medical use. So far, all that’s left is to nano-size the electronics and make the connections better. Once that happens, then what?

Currently the technology is limited to monochrome displays, but even so, they can be just as useful. Blood-sugar readings are just a start. From H+:

Professor Litt’s laboratory is a collaboration between Neurology, Neurosurgery, Neuroscience, and Engineering. While epilepsy is the lab’s core focus, other research includes implantable neurodevices, functional neurosurgery, network and computational neuroscience, movement disorders, intra-operative and ICU monitoring, major mental illness, and other brain network disorders.

Ultimately, they can be interfacing with the brain to allow the implantee to control the tattoos.

Making the millions-of-colors tattoos may still be ways off, but that isn’t stopping Wired from speculating about future uses:

GPS, with a map readout on the back of the wrist would certainly be useful, as would chips that cover your eyeballs and can darken down when the sun is shining too bright.

And a full-body display will eventually be used for advertising. Combine this with bioluminescent ink, for example, and you could turn yourself into a small, walking version of Times Square. At least, unlike a real tattoo, you can switch this one off.

I’m thinking about simply changing skin color to start, like going from Albino white to dark chocolate African, or maybe steel gray… or alien green.

Better still ... How about active/optical camouflage?

From Technology Review:

Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Implantable Silicon-Silk Electronics
Biodegradable circuits could enable better neural interfaces and LED tattoos.
By Katherine Bourzac

By building thin, flexible silicon electronics on silk substrates, researchers have made electronics that almost completely dissolve inside the body. So far the research group has demonstrated arrays of transistors made on thin films of silk. While electronics must usually be encased to protect them from the body, these electronics don't need protection, and the silk means the electronics conform to biological tissue. The silk melts away over time and the thin silicon circuits left behind don't cause irritation because they are just nanometers thick.

"Current medical devices are very limited by the fact that the active electronics have to be 'canned,' or isolated from the body, and are on rigid silicon," says Brian Litt, associate professor of neurology and bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Litt, who is working with the silk-silicon group to develop medical applications for the new devices, says they could interact with tissues in new ways. The group is developing silk-silicon LEDs that might act as photonic tattoos that can show blood-sugar readings, as well as arrays of conformable electrodes that might interface with the nervous system.

Last year, John Rogers, professor of materials science and engineering at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, developed flexible, stretchable silicon circuits whose performance matches that of their rigid counterparts. To make these devices biocompatible, Rogers's lab collaborated with Fiorenzo Omenetto and David Kaplan, professors of bioengineering at Tufts University in Medford, MA, who last year reported making nanopatterned optical devices from silkworm-cocoon proteins.

To make the devices, silicon transistors about one millimeter long and 250 nanometers thick are collected on a stamp and then transferred to the surface of a thin film of silk. The silk holds each device in place, even after the array is implanted in an animal and wetted with saline, causing it to conform to the tissue surface. In a paper published in the journal Applied Physics Letters, the researchers report that these devices can be implanted in animals with no adverse effects. And the performance of the transistors on silk inside the body doesn't suffer.

In the silk-silicon electronics, the silk plays a passive but important role. "Silk is mechanically strong enough to act as a support, but if you pour water on it, it conforms to the tissue surface," says Omenetto. Silk is already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for medical implants and is broken down completely by the body into harmless by-products. The silk sheets are flexible, and can be rolled up and then unfurled during surgery, making them easier for surgeons to work with. By adjusting the processing conditions used to fabricate the films, the Tufts researchers can control the rate at which the films will degrade, from immediately after implantation to years.

The biocompatibility of silicon is not as well established as that of silk, though all studies so far have shown the material to be safe. It seems to depend on the size and shape of the silicon pieces, so the group is working to minimize them. These devices also require electrical connections of gold and titanium, which are biocompatible but not biodegradable. Rogers is developing biodegradable electrical contacts so that all that would remain is the silicon.

The group is currently designing electrodes built on silk as interfaces for the nervous system. Electrodes built on silk could, Litt says, integrate much better with biological tissues than existing electrodes, which either pierce the tissue or sit on top of it. The electrodes might be wrapped around individual peripheral nerves to help control prostheses. Arrays of silk electrodes for applications such as deep-brain stimulation, which is used to control Parkinson's symptoms, could conform to the brain's crevices to reach otherwise inaccessible regions. "It would be nice to see the sophistication of devices start to catch up with the sophistication of our basic science, and this technology could really close that gap," says Litt.

Copyright © Technology Review 2009.

From H+ Magazine

Tattoo You

Animated and programmable LED tattoos connected to your brain? You could show off your latest Flash animations, watch TV on your arm, or have a built-in PDA screen. The possibilities are endless. Perhaps more than simply a fashion statement, you could use such LED tattoos to display medical information about your body such as blood-sugar readings. A recent article in MIT Technology Review describes a new type of super-thin silicon transistor that can be embedded on a dissolvable silk-based film and can do all of that.

Brian Litt, associate professor of neurology and bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania, is working with researchers from Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois and Tufts University to develop medical applications for the new transistors. Their silk-silicon LEDs can act as photonic tattoos that can show blood-sugar readings, as well as arrays of conformable electrodes that might interface with the nervous system.

Professor Litt’s laboratory is a collaboration between Neurology, Neurosurgery, Neuroscience, and Engineering. While epilepsy is the lab’s core focus, other research includes implantable neurodevices, functional neurosurgery, network and computational neuroscience, movement disorders, intra-operative and ICU monitoring, major mental illness, and other brain network disorders.

Arrays of silk electrodes for... deep-brain stimulation... the electrodes can be wrapped around individual peripheral nerves to help control prostheses.

When the Rolling Stones released Tattoo You in 1981, they had little notion that in a few short years tattoos would become more than the mark of bikers, sailors, and criminals or a fashion statement for hardcore hipsters and flashy rock stars. Tattoos would soon become commonplace among middle-aged housewives and business executives. Today, companies no less prestigious than Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands are exploring the potential for electronic tattoos as personal body adornment and self representation. Here’s a rather sensuous video from Philips that shows the human body as a platform for electronics and interactive skin technology:

Professor Litt’s silk-based transistors promise more than just personal adornment or even medical LED tattoos. Arrays of silk electrodes for applications such as deep-brain stimulation –- used to control Parkinson’s symptoms –- can be overlaid to conform precisely to the surface of the brain’s crevice structure to reach otherwise inaccessible regions. And the electrodes can be wrapped around individual peripheral nerves to help control prostheses. So far, these flexible devices have been implanted on mice without harm (The silk degrades over time).

The researchers summarized their experiments in a recent paper, “Silicon electronics on silk as a path to bioresorbable, implantable devices,” published in Applied Physics Letters. The silicon takes the form of nanomembranes built onto water soluble and biocompatible silk substrates. And while electronics must usually be encased to protect them from the body, these electronics don't need protection. The silk allows the electronics to match the contours of biological tissue. When wetted with saline, the devices conform to tissue surface. The silicon devices are about one millimeter long and 250 nanometers thick. They are manufactured on a stamp and then transferred to the surface of a thin film of silk. The silk holds each device in place, even after the array is implanted.

Tattooing in the Western world has its origins in Polynesia –- the first recorded encounter with the Tahitian tatau occurred during the 1769 expedition of Captain James Cook, the famed British Naval explorer. The Polynesian practice quickly became popular among European sailors, before spreading more widely. Cook’s infamous first officer William Bligh led a subsequent expedition to Tahiti in 1789 in search of breadfruit. Of the 25 mutineers aboard Bligh’s boat, HMS Bounty, court records show that twenty one had tattoos from their time in Tahiti. A century later, the royal princes, Albert and George, would visit tattooists first in Japan, then Jerusalem, while serving in the Royal Navy. The staid Cook and Bligh likely disapproved of this exotic body ornamentation at the time. Nor could they -- or the royalty that later adopted the fashion -- possibly envision that it might one day result in photonic LED tattoos connected to the brain.

See Also: Skin Phone

Resources:

Silicon electronics on silk as a path to bioresorbable, implantable devices

Silk-Silicon Implants Could Connect to Your Brain, Enable LED Tattoos

Litt Lab – Translational NeuroEngineering

History of Polynesian Tattoo

Domo arigato, Roboto-san.