An academic paper published on it indicates that such light sources will enable minimally invasive means of treating and better understanding diseases which currently require the implementation of bulky devices.

The new approach presented by Scottish and German scientists is based on the integration of organic light-emitting diodes—or OLEDs, which are usually found in smartphones and high-end screens—on “acoustic antennas.” They consist of thin layers of organic materials which can be deposited on almost any surface.

“We have exploited this property to deposit OLEDs directly on the acoustic antenna, thus merging the unique properties of both platforms into a single, extremely compact device,” explained Professor Malte Gather, from St Andrews’ School of Physics and Astronomy.

Biomedical implants have already helped push forward healthcare. For instance, electrode-based implants—such as cochlear implants, cardiac pacemakers, and brain stimulators—function based on the electrical excitability of human cells. They can help to restore hearing, normalise heart function, and mitigate the effects of debilitating diseases like Parkinson’s disease.

However, this wireless light-emitting device targets optical stimulation, which has emerged as a promising alternative to electrical stimulation because it can be more cell selective and even enable the stimulation of individual cells via genetic modification. Such techniques have shown promising results in early clinical trials, for example, in treating an otherwise untreatable eye disease.

For many emerging applications, multiple sites must be stimulated independently, and this is why modern brain stimulators often incorporate a large number of electrodes. An alternative stimulator however could consist of tiny, distributed devices, which could be powered and read wirelessly centimetres inside the body, eliminating the need for wires into and through the body altogether.

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As is also the case for electrical antennas, the size of both classical and acoustic antennas determines the frequency at which the device operates and in turn the frequency of the magnetic field that is received. This property is exploited by the new wireless light sources: by simply tuning the operation frequency of different acoustic antennas to different values by slightly varying their size, the scientists can operate several of their tiny light bulbs independently, turning each one on and off individually.

In the future, this could allow for the individual addressing of multiple stimulators in different parts of the body, for instance, to treat debilitating neurological disorders.

With their novel device platform, the scientists move one step closer to developing the “ideal stimulator” by combining minimal device size, low operation frequency, and optical stimulation—and Professor Gather is keen to continue the work.

“As a next step, we will work to further reduce the size of our wireless OLEDs and test our technology in an animal model,” he said.