Sustainable sense of the word, is one of the hardest tasks in making the fashion tech and wearables tech ‘smart’ which is finding a way to deal or prevent the creation of e-waste, the UN University in their “Global e-waste Monitor 2014” has revealed that the amount of global e-waste generation is expected to be around 49.8 million tons by the end of 2018

with an annual growth of 4.5 percent. The good news is that the researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder might also have found a way to develop an E-skin that according to the last week in the Journal Science Advances could reduce the amount of e-waste.

The thin film which can be easily attached to the body like a patch, that is equipped with pressure, humanity, airflow sensors, and temperature. Laced with silver nano particles, the device is made up of three commercially compounds which are mixed in a matrix.

When the electronic skin is torn, then the mixture of the three compounds will allow the ‘wound’ to ‘heal’ itself by recreating the chemical bond of the separated parts, restoring the matrix. Apart from that, when the divided parts are entirely broken then the material could be soaked in a solution to liquefy it so that it could create a brand new E-skin.

E-skin Technology Mimicking The Properties of Human Skin

This is an application, which can be very helpful in the field of prosthetic and robotic development. It has the potential to enable the wearable health devices and biomedical.

On improving the e-waste issue, the study co-author Jianliang Xiao, which is an assistant professor of medical engineering of Colorado University stated: “We want to make electronics to be environmentally friendly.” He continued, “This particular device won’t produce any waste. What is unique here is that the chemical bonding of polyimide we use allows the e-skin to be both self-healing and fully recyclable at room temperature,” said Xiao.

This article is first published on FashNerd.com  By Mano