Ultrathin 'E-Skin' Turns Your Hand into an Electronic Display
Now, a team from the University of Tokyo has developed a unique method to create a protective coating that can shield the electronic components from the air while remaining thin enough to stay flexible.
"We think that functionalizing the skin may replace the smartphone in the future," Someya told Live Science. "When you carry an iPhone, it is a bulky device. But if you functionalize your own skin, you don’t need to carry anything, and it's easy to receive information anywhere, anytime."
In the near future, this technology could be used to monitor people's health, Someya said. To demonstrate its potential, his team created a device consisting of red and green OLEDs and a light detector that could monitor the concentration of oxygen in a human subject's blood when the e-skin is laminated to the person's finger using highly flexible adhesive tape. [Bionic Humans: Top 10 Technologies]