Electrothermal patches driving the transdermal delivery of insulin.Transdermal patches have become a widely used approach for painless delivery of drugs.  We present a novel patch design based on the integration of nano-engineered heating elements on polyimide substrates for electrothermal transdermal therapy.  The results reveal that tuning of the electrical resistivity of an array of gold nanoholes, patterned on polyimide, facilitates a fast-responding electrothermal skin patch, while post-coating with reduced graphene oxide offers capabilities for drug encapsulation, like insulin.  While demonstrated for insulin, the skin patches might be well adapted to other low and high molecular weight therapeutic drugs, enabling on-demand electrothermal transdermal delivery.
THERM