The ability to study the working human brain from the inside is just one vision made possible by the research of John A. Rogers, professor of materials science at the University and world leader in flexible electronics, and the rest of his research team. This, along with some of their “wilder ideas” for engineering will be funded by the $500,000 grant awarded to Rogers for his creative and promising research in the material science field Rogers was named a MacArthur Fellow and one of 24 new recipients of the “Genius Grant” in September. He will receive the grant money over the course of the next five years, the first check having arrived earlier this month.

With the grant money, Rogers will continue the development of flexible electronics, by replacing the flat, brittle silicon wafers usually used to house electronic material, with new design layouts that allow for flexibility of the entire system.

Rogers began experimenting with organic materials with higher flexibility as surfaces for electronic circuits, but later turned his focus to new design layouts that would allow him to use materials like silicon that are conventionally rigid and brittle as flexible substrates.

“We later found that we could not only achieve flexible electronics (e.g. like a sheet of plastic), but also fully stretchable systems (e.g. like a rubber band),” Rogers said.

Using current-carrying materials like PET (plastic soda bottles) and silicone (bathroom caulk), Rogers and his team developed entirely flexible electronic systems in which the substrate and circuits are stretchable.

This opened the doors to entirely new types of electronic devices, Rogers said, including large, lightweight displays (similar to Minority Report) and flexible photovoltaics, converters of sunlight into electricity, which can be rolled up and unrolled for easy transportation.

More unique is the development of “skin-like” electronics that integrate with body organs to create easy and accurate monitoring and therapy in the human heart and brain.

These devices consist of thin sheets of substrate with sensing and stimulating nodes which seamlessly integrate with the tissue of the heart or brain and monitor electrical activity in these body systems.

The development of completely flexible electronic devices has also advanced Roger’s research of eye cameras that conform to curved surfaces and provide a fuller and completely different image of space.

Since he was named a MacArthur Fellow in September, Rogers said that they have begun research in a totally new area of electronics.

The development of flexible systems allows electronics to conform to curved tissue services in the body, but the materials used in these systems don’t always react well within the body.

Rogers said his research team is working on the development of bioresorbable electronics.

In models using silicon, the material is used to create circuits which are stamped onto a silk substrate which dissolves, or are resorbed, once implanted in organ tissue, leaving the electronics to monitor activity in the organ.

By using materials that are composed of the same materials in body tissue as an initial substrate, electronics could possibly exist freely in the human body.