Engineers from Nanjing University have created an epidermal watch - a thin display that sticks to the back of a person’s hand. The numbers on it are bright enough to be visible even in sunlight, and the voltage is low enough so as not to harm the skin.

The base for the watch is made of an electroluminescent layer consisting of light-emitting microparticles. They are applied to a stretchable dielectric material located between two flexible electrodes made of silver nanowires.

The dielectric material is made of ceramic nanoparticles embedded in a rubber polymer. They have the property of concentrating the electric field on the phosphor, making it much brighter at much lower voltages.

So far, development is a prototype, but researchers expect that in the future such displays can be used in soft robotics and in brain-computer interfaces.

Earlier, engineers from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Paulson created a robotic bee whose wings drive soft artificial muscles.

hightech.fm