The temperature of the surface of the skin and heat movements on the skin can provide interesting information about a person’s health, including signs of underlying cardiac conditions. A new device, made of 3,600 liquid crystals that sit atop a flexible and stretchable substrate, is able to accurately detect in real time the temperature gradients present across its surface.
Developed at Unviersity of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and Northwestern University, the device builds on the work of UIUC’s John A. Rogers, whose lab has been revolutionizing the field of flexible electronics. Each crystal in the array changes color independently depending on the temperature below it. The entire device can be gently laminated onto a person’s skin and an accompanying app is used to extract data from the crystals’ colors from a photo of the patch. By detecting the changing temperature on the skin surface, the blood’s flow rate below and how hydrated the skin is can be extrapolated.
The device provides mili-Kelvin precision and the closeness of the liquid crystals offers sub-millimeter spatial resolution.
Study in Nature Communications: Epidermal photonic devices for quantitative imaging of temperature and thermal transport characteristics of the skin…
Press release: ‘SKIN-LIKE’ DEVICE MONITORS CARDIOVASCULAR AND SKIN HEALTH…