New Bendable Smartphone Technology Could Soon Provide Better Health Monitoring

Does the holiday shopping list have a new phone on it? A “radical” technology developed at Purdue University that’s transforming smartphones and other electronic devices into more bendable ones could help save lives in the near future through better health monitoring.

Purdue researchers have engineered a glass-like polymer to conduct electricity for flexible and transparent electronics.

The advanced polymer film, which resembles and feels like glass, can be economically and sustainably manufactured on a large scale as it originates from materials found abundantly on earth. Its cost-effectiveness also has benefits over polymers already utilized for electronics that depend on expensive chemical doping and chemistry to attain high conductivity.

Purdue’s polymer is composed of long chains that contain radical groups, which are molecules that have at least one unpaired electron.

“We have made a giant leap in polymer production by better matching the mechanical properties of organic materials used to create them and helping to avoid catastrophic failures with electronic display screens,” said Bryan Boudouris, the Robert and Sally Weist Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, who led the research team.

The team's work lines up with Purdue's Giant Leaps celebration, recognizing the university’s global advancements in health and sustainability as part of Purdue’s 150^th anniversary. This is one of the four themes of the yearlong celebration’s Ideas Festival, designed to highlight Purdue as an intellectual center solving real-world problems.

Brett Savoie, an assistant professor of chemical engineering who served as a senior member of the study team, said the new polymer is also the main platform for research at the Purdue-based Materials Innovation for Bioelectronics from Intrinsically-stretchable Organics (Mi-Bio) center. The scientists there are working to employ this new polymer film to develop custom sensors that could non-invasively track heart rate, glucose levels, or other biomedical metrics.

The Purdue polymer film could be altered using particular ions or molecules to target and selectively interact with several biological components within the body. It could be worn as an almost invisible patch on the skin.

It’s incredible to be part of the Purdue team that’s leveraging the enormous chemical flexibility of these materials to create life-saving technology.

Brett Savoie, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, Purdue University

Scientists are working with the Purdue Office of Technology Commercialization to patent the innovation, and they are seeking partners to further develop it.