New material enables stretchable wearable devices

An international team of researchers from Rice University, Texas and Hanyang University, South Korea developed the material by embedding clusters of highly dielectric ceramic nanoparticles into an elastic polymer. Their findings are published in Nature.

The material was reverse engineered to mimic skin elasticity and motion types, and also to adjust its dielectric properties to counter the disruptive effects of motion on interfacing electronics, minimise energy loss and dissipate heat.

In a statement, Raudel Avila, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Rice and a lead author of the study, said: “Our team was able to combine simulations and experiments to understand how to design a material that can seamlessly deform like skin and change the way electrical charges distribute inside it when it is stretched so as to stabilise radio-frequency communication. In a way, we are carefully engineering an electrical response to a mechanical event.”

Avila explained that two antennas communicating with each other do so at a given frequency.