In this work we further exploration on the use of the conducting polymer, namely PEDOT:PSS, for the purpose of customized skin mapping was performed. An ex-situ and an in-situ 3-D and electrically conducting mapping of the skin topography via electropolymerization of conducting polymer on previously sampled skin stamp or directly on an alive human subject skin (Figure 1) were performed here for the intention to be further used in biomedical applications, e.g. wound and scar healing.
The developed off-body and on-body skin patterns were evaluated for their 3-D nature/topography using AFM, for their morphology using SEM and for their conductivity using electrochemical methods. We have shown that the direct electropolymerization of skin features on alive human skin was possible and may be applied if purely non-toxic set of compounds is used to produce 3-D and electrically conducting skin patterns. For that, the electrochemistry of skin pattern polymerization was performed in custom layered electrochemical cell which opens new possibilities and designs of conducting electrochemical experiments and application of the new electrochemical cell
Figure 1. Scheme of on-body, direct electropolymerization on alive human skin featuring high-resolution camera picture of developed 3-D and electrically conducting skin pattern.
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