A Tailorable and Transferable Flexible Patch for Simultaneous Electrostimulation and Electro-Controlled Drug Delivery...

Effective wound management is crucial for improved outcomes through timely, personalized therapies. Current dressing-based treatments lack dynamic regulation and microenvironment modulation, leading to suboptimal healing. Integrating electrical stimulation therapy with electro-controlled drug delivery promotes skin generation, ensures precise dosing, and accelerates healing. Flexible electronic patches are ideal platforms for these synergistic therapies but face challenges: rigid post-manufacture shapes and sizes limit adaptability to diverse wound geometries, and substrate materials struggle to meet both wound-healing and electronic requirements. This study develops a tailorable, transferable flexible electronic patch with a hexagonal modular design, enabling shape/size customization while maintaining electrical continuity. The water-transfer printing (WTP) technique is used to conveniently transfer conductive chondroitin sulfate (CS) hydrogel (as electrodes and drug reservoirs) and silver circuits onto clinical dressings. This method endows clinical dressings with functionality of electro-controlled drug release and electrical stimulation, simultaneously addressing substrate performance limitations of flexible electronic patches. The patch demonstrates uniform electrical signal transmission, precise electro-responsive drug control in CS hydrogels, and adaptability to wounds of different geometries. It retains electrostimulation and electro-controlled drug delivery performance after cutting, significantly promoting wound healing. This study provides a potential approach to support the advancement of flexible electronics research and clinical translation.