Wearable Intrinsically Soft, Stretchable, Flexible Devices for Memories and Computing

• Published in: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 18; no. 2; p. 367
• Main Authors: Rajan, Krishna, Garofalo, Erik, Chiolerio, Alessandro
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 27.01.2018; MDPI
• Subjects: Air monitoring; Computation; Data systems; Electronic systems; Environmental monitoring; Humans; Light pollution; Nanotechnology; Organic Chemicals; Organic chemistry; Peripheral nervous system; Pollution monitoring; Review; Smart materials; Smartphones; Textiles; Wearable Electronic Devices; Wearable technology; memristors; soft electronics; stretchable; wearable; printed electronics; Computing Devices; amp; flexible; resistive switching devices; Wearable Memories & knitted electronics; e-textiles
• ISSN: 1424-8220; 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s18020367

A recent trend in the development of high mass consumption electron devices is towards electronic textiles (e-textiles), smart wearable devices, smart clothes, and flexible or printable electronics. Intrinsically soft, stretchable, flexible, Wearable Memories and Computing devices (WMCs) bring us closer to sci-fi scenarios, where future electronic systems are totally integrated in our everyday outfits and help us in achieving a higher comfort level, interacting for us with other digital devices such as smartphones and domotics, or with analog devices, such as our brain/peripheral nervous system. WMC will enable each of us to contribute to open and big data systems as individual nodes, providing real-time information about physical and environmental parameters (including air pollution monitoring, sound and light pollution, chemical or radioactive fallout alert, network availability, and so on). Furthermore, WMC could be directly connected to human brain and enable extremely fast operation and unprecedented interface complexity, directly mapping the continuous states available to biological systems. This review focuses on recent advances in nanotechnology and materials science and pays particular attention to any result and promising technology to enable intrinsically soft, stretchable, flexible WMC.