The Illustrated Man: How LED Tattoos Could Make Your Skin a Screen

New LED tattoos from the University of Pennsylvania could make the Illustrated Man real. Researchers there are developing silicon-and-silk implantable devices which sit under the skin like a tattoo. Already implanted into mice, these tattoos could carry LEDs, turning your skin into a screen. The silk substrate onto which the chips are mounted eventually dissolves away inside the body, leaving just the electronics behind. The silicon chips are around the length of a small grain of rice — about 1 millimetre, and just 250 nanometres thick. The sheet of silk will keep them in place, molding to the shape of the skin when saline solution is added