Nature Mater. doi:10.1038/nmat2745 (2010)

Implanted electronic or medical devices can damage tissue or jostle themselves loose. The development of ultrathin electronics mounted on a flexible and dissolvable silk film could help to resolve this problem.

John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Brian Litt at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and their colleagues have fabricated thin electronics and transferred them to a layer of silk (pictured above). They placed their device on the surface of the exposed brain of an anaesthetized cat and show that, after application, the biocompatible silk dissolves, leaving the electronics layer tightly wrapped around the tissue. Its electrodes were able to detect brain activity.