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Home > Press > Light-emitting tattoo engineered for the first time: Scientists at UCL and the IIT -Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology) have created a temporary tattoo with light-emitting technology used in TV and smartphone screens, paving the way for a new type of
OLED tattoo.
CREDIT
Barsotti - Italian Institute of Technology.
Abstract:
Scientists at UCL and the IIT -Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology) have created a temporary tattoo with light-emitting technology used in TV and smartphone screens, paving the way for a new type of smart tattoo with a range of potential uses.
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Mar 4th, 2021
Barsotti, Italian Institute of Technology
Scientists at University College London and the Italian Institute of Technology have created a temporary tattoo with light-emitting technology used in TV and smartphone screens, paving the way for a new type of smart tattoo with a range of potential uses.
The technology, which uses organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), is applied in the same way as water transfer tattoos. That is, the OLEDs are fabricated on to temporary tattoo paper and transferred to a new surface by being pressed on to it and dabbed with water.
Tattooable OLED anyone? Researchers at University College London have created an OLED that can be applied to skin like a children’s transfer tattoo.
So much like a child’s transfer is it, that it is made on the same type of substrate and applied the same way: wet it, stick it, and peel off the backing paper.
The OLED starts life as a sheet of commercial ‘tattoo paper’ – this is already a laminate of a smooth-surfaced paper called glassine that is coated with a water soluble starchy layer, then topped with a water-resistant layer of ethylcellulose – the latter of which is usually printed on to make the tattoo image.
These OLED smart tattoos aren't inserted into the dermis layer of the skin using a needle, as with the traditional version. Instead, they're applied in the same.