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'Electric Plastic' Could Unleash Next-Gen Implants and Wearable Tech
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Magazine: Imagine a thin wristband that monitors your steps and heartbeat like an Apple Watch. Or clothing that keeps you cool with built-in air conditioning. Or even a flexible implant that could help your heart better than a bulky pacemaker. That's ...
That's the promise of a new, electrically active material researchers have created by combining short chains of amino acids called peptides with snippets of a polymer plastic. This "electric plastic," reported this month in Nature, can store energy or record information, opening the door to self-powered wearables, real-time neural interfaces, and medical implants that merge with bodies better than current tech. Stupp's team has conducted small-scale evaluations of molecules, but scaling up will require placing water-suspended structures onto devices without altering them -- a challenge noted by chemist Frank Leibfarth.
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