Ultraflexible Ferroelectric Transducers and Organic Circuits for Energy-Efficient Wireless Health Patches

Health is a very precious commodity, as we experience every day and especially in these times shaken by a pandemic. Continuous recording of health status through diagnostic techniques that combine high wearing comfort with high reliability, accuracy and cost-effectiveness is therefore very desirable. In this context, we present an ultraflexible solution for the power supply of wireless medical patches for monitoring of heart rate and blood pressure. The ultraflexibility is due to the very low overall thickness (only 2.5 µm in total) of the ferroelectric polymer transducers, organic rectifiers and capacitor components manufactured on a substrate only 1 µm thick, and it guarantees high sensitivity (15 nC N^-1), superior component reliability (over 6000 cyclic loading) and a very high peak power density (1 mW cm^-3 at 2 Hz excitation). Our health patch solution not only includes this radically reduced layer thickness, but also new material combinations (ferroelectric polymers on parylene), novel device concepts (organic thin-film transistor-based diodes) and new integration principles (multi-stack transducers on 3D curved surfaces).¹<br/><br/>¹Petritz, A., Karner-Petritz, E., Uemura, T. et al. Imperceptible energy harvesting device and biomedical sensor based on ultraflexible ferroelectric transducers and organic diodes. Nat Commun 12, 2399 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22663-6