"Smart" glue band-aid can be intelligent wound dressing

For thousands of years, people have been using a variety of bandages to explode wounds, but injured people have never used such band-aids. Researchers in the United States have recently invented a slimy, elastic, gel-like material. It can be used as a "smart wound dressing". Integrating the temperature sensing and pharmacy system, this hydrogel bandage can release the drug according to the temperature change of the body surface, and the embedded LED lamp can even remind the patient when the dose is low.

Electronic devices tend to be dry and hard, but the body is wet and soft. The properties of the two systems are completely different," said Xuanhe Zhao, a mechanical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "If you want electronic devices to be in close contact with the human body for health monitoring and drug delivery, you need to do electronic devices." Soft and flexible to adapt to the human environment. This is also the motivation for the invention of stretchable hydrogel electronics.

Wrap-around materials made from hydrogel matrices have a number of benefits over traditional fabric stretches. It is highly elastic and can be stretched at will, so it can be used anywhere in the body, including joints such as the elbows and knees.

This rubber-like material is mainly composed of water and can be implanted into a range of electronic devices such as conductive wires, semiconductor chips, LED lamps and temperature sensors.

Researchers describe the dressing material in Advanced Materials magazine, where their bandages deliver different drugs to different parts of the skin based on the temperature of the site. By implanting a pipe or drilling, the drug can flow freely through the gel.

“This matrix is ​​simply a versatile,” said Hyunwoo Yuk, one of the team members. "The most special ability is that when the sensor senses some abnormality such as abnormal temperature rise, the device can immediately select the specified drug from the drug pool system, then deliver the drug to the designated location, and then continue to be administered through the hydrogel matrix. ”

Hydrogels have proven to be effective as medical ointments for burns and skin diseases, but according to the researchers, their role is not limited to topical use. In theory it can also act on the body as a carrier for implanting electronic devices, such as glucose receptors or nerve probes.

"The brain is a jelly," Zhao said. “Now, we are experimenting with different soft materials to achieve long-term biocompatibility of nerve devices. Together with our collaborators, we are recommending the use of strong hydrogels as the ideal nerve device material because hydrogels are like brains. , all have similar mechanical and physiological characteristics."

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