A brand new examine by College of Massachusetts Amherst researchers demonstrates the effectiveness of selfmade play putty at studying mind, coronary heart, muscle and eye exercise. Printed in Machine, the analysis outlines the conductive properties of this materials, so-named “squishy circuits.”
“[Squishy circuits] are actually kid’s play putty, that can be conductive” describes Dmitry Kireev, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and senior writer on the paper.
The conductive squishy circuits — whether or not selfmade or store-bought- are made from flour, water, salt, cream of tartar and vegetable oil. “Salt is what makes it conductive,” Kireev explains. As a toddler’s toy, this modeling clay is a maleable manner so as to add lights to an artwork projectby connecting them to an influence supply as a strategy to train children about circuits. Now, Kireev and his crew have demonstrated that the fabric has extra potential.
“We used the squishy circuits as an interface to measure electrical energy or measure bioelectrical potentials from a human physique,” he says. They discovered that, in comparison with commercially out there gel electrodes, these squishy circuits successfully captured varied electrophysiology measurements: electroencephalogram (EEG) for mind exercise, electrocardiogram (ECG) for coronary heart recordings, electrooculogram (EOG) for monitoring eye motion and electromyography (EMG) for muscle contraction.
“What makes one electrode materials higher than one other by way of the standard of the measurements is impedance,” he explains. Impedance is a measure that describes the standard of conductivity between two supplies. “The decrease the impedance between the electrode and the tissue, the higher the conductivity in between and the higher your skill to measure these bioelectrical potentials.”
The examine discovered that the impedance for the squishy circuit electrode was on par with one of many commercially out there gel electrodes and twice as higher as a second comparability electrode.
Kireev highlights a number of advantages to this materials. First is price: Even utilizing pre-made putty, the price per electrode was about 1cent. Typical electrodes price on common between $0.25 and $1.
Additionally, the fabric is resilient: it may be fashioned and reformed, molded to the contours of the pores and skin, mixed with extra putty to make it larger, reused and simply reconnected if it comes aside. Different comparable state-of-the-art wearable bioelectronics have been made from carbon nanotubes, graphene, silver nanowires and natural polymers. Whereas extremely conductive, these supplies might be costly, troublesome to deal with or make, single use or fragile.
Kireev additionally highlights the provision of those supplies. “It is one thing you are able to do at residence or in highschool laboratories, for instance, if wanted,” he says. “You may democratize these purposes [so it’s] extra widespread.”
He provides credit score to his analysis crew of undergraduate college students (a few of whom have since graduated and are persevering with with graduate research at UMass): Alexandra Katsoulakis, Favour Nakyazze, Max Mchugh, Sean Morris, Monil Bhavsar and Om Tank.