PRECISION NEURAL INTERFACES THROUGH INTRINSICALLY STRETCHABLE ELECTRONICS
The rapid advancement of wearable technology has introduced a new era of human-machine interaction, with soft bioelectronics emerging as a novel field at the intersection of materials science, electrical engineering, and healthcare. Soft bioelectronics offers unprecedented opportunities for seamless integration with the human body, promising to transform personal health monitoring, medical diagnostics, and human-machine interfaces. These flexible and stretchable electronic systems conform to the complex topography of human skin, adapting to its constant motion and deformation while minimizing mechanical stress on tissues. This adaptability enables long-term, comfortable wear for continuous physiological monitoring, advanced prosthetic control, or novel human augmentation, overcoming the limitations of rigid electronic systems.Despite significant progress, challenges persist in developing skin-interfaced electronics that maintain high performance across diverse skin conditions and age groups. This dissertation presents the development and evaluation of "InSkin," an innovative, inclusive skin-interfaced electronic platform designed for high-fidelity, high-density, multi-channel electrophysiological recording. The InSkin technology addresses critical challenges in current skin-interfaced electronics, particularly the variability in signal quality across diverse skin conditions and age groups. A novel conductive polymer composite, Solution CP-G, was engineered to create a conformal, stretchable interface that adapts to various skin morphologies. This material demonstrated exceptional mechanical properties, maintaining electrical functionality at up to ~1200% strain when supported strain while achieving a 93.18% reduction in electrode-skin impedance compared to commercial electrodes. Comprehensive characterization studies revealed InSkin's superior performance across different skin types. The device maintained 80.65% of its signal amplitude on wrinkled skin compared to smooth skin and 100% on hairy skin compared to shaved skin. Long-term stability tests showed 75% signal quality retention after 24 hours of continuous wear. High-density surface electromyography (sEMG) mapping capabilities were demonstrated using a 32-channel array with 12 mm inter-electrode spacing. This enabled detailed visualization of muscle activity patterns, including motor unit action potential propagation and innervation zone identification, showcasing potential applications in neuromuscular research and personalized rehabilitation. Advanced gesture recognition algorithms integrated with the InSkin platform achieved 97.7% accuracy in classifying ten hand gestures, significantly outperforming commercial electrodes. This performance was consistent across age groups, with only a 4% reduction in accuracy for older participants. The system's efficacy was further validated through successful integration with a prosthetic hand prototype, demonstrating the potential for intuitive, high-precision control. The dissertation also explores potential applications of InSkin in healthcare monitoring, rehabilitation, and human-machine interfaces. Future research directions include material enhancements, integration with other sensing modalities, and advanced signal-processing techniques. This work contributes significantly to the field of skin-interfaced electronics by addressing key challenges in adaptability, signal quality, and long-term wearability. While demonstrating significant advancements, challenges remain in long-term biocompatibility and power management for continuous monitoring applications. This work lays the foundation for a new generation of inclusive bioelectronic devices, with potential impacts spanning from personalized healthcare to advanced human-machine interaction.
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- In Collections
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Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Copyright Status
- Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
- Material Type
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Theses
- Authors
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Mottini, Vittorio
- Thesis Advisors
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Li, Jinxing
- Committee Members
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Li, Wen
Qiu, Zhen
Unluturk, Bige
Yan, Lili
- Date Published
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2024
- Program of Study
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Biomedical Engineering - Doctor of Philosophy
- Degree Level
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Doctoral
- Language
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English
- Pages
- 183 pages
- Permalink
- https://doi.org/doi:10.25335/7kkk-pa66