Developing soft materials with novel properties

Soft Materials for Precise and Long-term Health Monitor

Wearables allow continuous 24/7 observation of a patient's health, whether at home or on the road. The data captured by wearable sensors can provide tremendous value to healthcare services and can provide insights into an individual's health. Soft conductive materials, combining tissue-like mechanical properties with outstanding electrical performance, can provide more precise detection than conventional devices. The long-term health monitoring requires high stability of soft materials under harsh environments involving unpredicted changes in stress, humidity, and temperature. We are developing soft functional materials using oligomers as a solvent to achieve precise signal capture and maintain long-term performance. The choice of the oligomer as a solvent can efficiently avoid solvent leakage and evaporation due to its strong interaction with the elastic polymer network, which can maintain the performance of materials for a long time under the working environment. The possibility of having such a reliable soft functional material will further advance the current wearable devices and achieve accurate and reliable long-term health monitoring.