Wearable electronic is still in it’s early stage, make the first baby steps into the harsh world of commercialization but visionaries and researchers work already on the next big thing in getting electronics closer to our bodies, actually inside our bodies.

Having electronic implants is not new and some people depend their life on it with pacemakers for example. But these developments can also be used for a more playful, fashionable purpose or artistic like the Bare Conductive concept which uses conductive ink to paint circuitry on the skin.

Other companies have patented the human skin to be used for power and data transmission. A handshake can exchange information from one Blackberry to the other in a wearers pocket.

According to a recent Technology Review article, researchers at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois, the Tufts University in Medford, MA, and the University of Pennsylvania building thin, flexible silicon electronics on silk substrates that almost completely integrate into the body.

While electronics usually has to be encased to protect it from the body, these electronics don’t need protection. During the implanting the electronics is covered in a silk like substrate which melts away over time and the thin silicon circuits left behind don’t cause irritation because they are just nanometers thick.

The group is developing silk-silicon LEDs that might act as photonic tattoos that can show blood-sugar readings, as well as arrays of conformable electrodes that might interface with the nervous system.

The Skin LEDs have been successfully implanted into mice and now it’s time to find volunteers for the next testing phase.

Electronic giant Philips is exploring the body as platform for electronics as well with their version of an electronic Tattoo, the SKIN:Tattoo which is stimulated by touch. Sensual navigation along the landscape of the body paints tattoo like pattern on the skin.

The good thing about electronic tattoo’s: they can be instantly and painlessly switched off or changed compared to needle and ink tattoo’s – that is, one has to go over the implanting pain first.

For now I am taking a step back and focus on wearable, textile electronic before going under my skin.

Conductive body paint could enable us to interact with our continuously shrinking electronic devices not only via clothing but directly via our skin.

At least this is the vision of the creator of ‘Bare Conductive‘: Becky Pilditch, Matt Johnson, Isabel Lizardi and Bibi Nelson, from the Industrial Design Engineering department at the Royal Collage of Art.

The conductive body paint is carbon based and water-soluble, skin-safe and non-invasive. Application of the body paint could be via brushing, stamping or spraying and might be one day be possible to print electrical circuit onto the skin.

Sure there will be the issue of how long the print will last and limitations on how much current can flow along the skin and yeah – I don’t see this in the mass market but in haute tech, high fashion or in more ‘down to earth’ application in the professional space ‘Bare conductive’ could provide a cool, high tech solution.

Conductive ink and paste is used already to electrifying textiles or to create interactive artistic drawings as we have posted about some time ago.

Electrifying the human skin as information transfer medium is not entirely new as Microsoft patented the human skin for data and power distribution back in 2004.

Looking to concepts like skin electronic, textile electronic looks already so established and reasonable feasible.

[source: Next Nature via Grinding]