Smart Bandage: A Sensor Platform Based Plastic Electronic

Marc Koetse

Holst Centre
P.O. Box 8550, NL-5605 KN Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Tel: +31 40 277 4058  Fax: +31 40 274 6400
Email: marc.koetse@tno.nl

Biography

Marc M. Koetse studied chemistry in Groningen the Netherlands. After graduation in 1997 he started as a PhD-student at the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium) in the field of polymer chemistry and material science. He received his degree in 2001 under the supervision of Prof. Dr. A. Laschewsky.
 
After two years working as a post-doc at the Eindhoven University of Technology (the Netherlands)  in the field of organic electronics, he started at TNO Science and Industry (Eindhoven, the Netherlands) to work mainly on organic photovoltaics. In 2006 he made the move to the newly founded Holst Centre in the same city. Here he started a group developing lamination and interconnection technology of foil based modules. Recently he became project leader in the Sensor Tags and Systems program where he is responsible for the integration of organic and inorganic electronics into generic sensor platforms such as a smart bandage.

About Holst Centre

Holst Centre is an independent open-innovation R&D centre that develops generic technologies for Wireless Autonomous Transducer Solutions and for Systems-in-Foil. A key feature of Holst Centre is its partnership model with industry and academia around shared roadmaps and programs.
The Holst Centre was founded in 2005 by IMEC (Flanders, Belgium) and TNO (The Netherlands) with support from the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Government of Flanders. Located at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, Holst Centre benefits from numerous state-of-the-art on-site facilities. Currently, Holst Centre has over 100 employees (growing to over 200 by 2010) and a commitment from over 15 industrial partners.

Abstract

Smart Bandages are bandages that apart from protecting a wound are able to monitor the healing process as well. Organic electronic devices are ideal for incorporation in bandages due to their reduced thickness, weight, and flexibility. Also there is the promise for large scale and cheap production, for example by means of roll-to-roll manufacturing. This is important since bandages are disposables and therefore low cost.

We present a pulse meter based on polymer light emitting diodes (PLED) and polymer photodiodes (PPD). The devices are manufactured on plastic foil substrates by means of printing technologies. A modular build up of these and low power wireless sensor nodes will allow for an almost 2 dimensional design that can be incorporated in a body area network. Furthermore, the modular approach allows for the application of the optical sensing unit in a broad variety of fields (e.g. chemical sensing). Finally, the prove of principle will be shown by means of the results of controlled measurements