If you would love to get a tattoo but can’t stand the thought of needles, a UK-based startup has just invented the perfect solution.
CipherX has developed the world’s first completely painless tattoo that delivers permanent ink with zero discomfort.
Instead of using a traditional tattoo gun to inject pigment under the skin, this unusual technology is applied with a clever disposable plaster.
Each patch is covered with hundreds of tiny spikes made of normal carbon-based tattoo ink combined with a specialised biopolymer.
Once the patch is aligned, these ‘microneedles’ are pushed into the skin and start to break down, depositing a tiny pixel of ink in exactly the right spot.
After 15 minutes, the needle-filled sticker can be peeled away to reveal a permanent ‘microdot’ tattoo that will slowly darken over the following 48 hours.
Unlike a normal tattoo, CipherX says there is no pain, blood, and very little damage to the surrounding tissue.
And, in great news for tattoo fans, each design currently costs just £50.
UK-based company CipherX has developed the world’s first completely painless tattoo that delivers permanent ink with zero discomfort
Instead of using a tattoo gun, the company has developed a patch coated with hundreds of ‘microneedles’ made of tattoo ink and a biopolymer
Tattooing has been around for thousands of years, with some of the earliest examples dating back 5,000 years to the marks on Otzi the Iceman, a mummy found in the Alps.
However, besides the invention of the electric tattoo gun in 1891, techniques for putting ink under the skin have remained relatively unchanged.
CipherX says that the inspiration for their tattoo applicator came from co-creator Ferdinand Kohle’s fear of needles and blood.
Mr Kohle told the Daily Mail: ‘Conventional tattooing works well for many people, but it is not accessible to everyone.
‘Pain, needle or blood phobia, anxiety, or certain skin conditions can prevent people from participating, even when they are interested in tattoos and self-expression.
‘The technology is not intended to replace tattoo artists or conventional tattooing. They will not be suitable for everyone, and that is ok, but for some people they may offer an option that did not previously exist – including myself.’
Currently CipherX is only offering its revolutionary tattoos in a limited number of designs, such as hearts, stars and smiley faces, that fit inside a 15-millimetre frame.
You can purchase a voucher for a design online, but the actual tattoo can only be applied at a CipherX event where staff check customers are over 18, consenting, and sober.
Once aligned, an applicator pushes the needles into the skin, where they break down to leave behind a single pixel of ink
CipherX says that the process takes just 15 minutes and doesn’t cause any pain or bleeding
The company also refuses to apply its painless tattoos anywhere on the hands, feet, groin, neck, or face.
However, in the future, the company says that it would like to make its patches available to order online and apply at home.
While this could lead to some poor impulse decisions and regrettable tattoos, the team say that their sterile, accurately-dosed patches make home tattooing safer and easier to reverse.
Tattoo guns or ‘stick and poke’ needles can already be purchased online, and ink that is placed too deep in the skin can be much harder to fade with laser removal.
In contrast, CipherX’s technique doesn’t create the web of scar tissue sometimes left by heavy-handed tattooing, which could make their ink easier to remove.
However, although the tattoos are certainly eye-catching, giving people an easy way to get inked isn’t CipherX’s real goal.
Instead, they want to use their microneedle applicators to deliver vaccines and other medicine through the skin without the need for traditional injections.
‘Dissolving microneedles were originally developed for applications such as drug and vaccine delivery,’ says Mr Kohle.
The tattoos are permanent and darken over 48 hours after application. A small design that fits within a 1.5-centimetre frame currently costs £50 and can only be applied at a CipherX event
‘The same underlying technology platform used for Microdot Tattoos could potentially be adapted for therapeutic delivery, diagnostics, health monitoring and medical marking – for example, creating small, consistent skin markers to support patient positioning during radiotherapy.’
The company has already received funding from Innovate UK, the government’s technology innovation agency, to help researchers at the University of Oxford develop a contraceptive hormonal patch.
Similarly, the team are looking at how their patch can deliver ‘lipid nanoparticles’, the same tiny packets of medicine that were used in the mRNA Covid-19 vaccine.
Tattooing might seem like an unusual first step toward this goal, but it is far less regulated than medical products, allowing CipherX to trial their tech in the real world before going to clinical trial.
This comes after scientists from Michigan State University revealed how people make judgments based on someone’s tattoos.
According to their analysis, people with cheerful, colourful tattoos are seen as more agreeable.
In contrast, people who opt for tattoos featuring death imagery are more likely to be rated as unpleasant.
Meanwhile, people with large, traditional-looking tattoos are more likely to be rated as extroverted.
WHAT ARE THE OLDEST TATTOOS IN THE WORLD?
Since his discovery on 19 December 1991 by German hikers, Ötzi (artist’s impression) has provided window into early human history.
Since his discovery on 19 December 1991 by German hikers, Ötzi has provided a window into early human history.
His mummified remains were uncovered in melting glacier in the mountainous border between Austria and Italy.
Analysis of the body has told us that he was alive during the Copper Age and died a grisly death.
Ötzi, who was 46 at the time of his death, had brown eyes, relatives in Sardinia, and was lactose intolerant.
Experts discovered a total of 61 tattoos on Ötzi’s body using different wavelengths of light to pick them out on the mummy’s darkened skin.
And in December 2015 they were confirmed to be the world’s oldest – beating markings on an unidentified South American Chinchorro mummy.
Experts had thought the South American mummy with a moustache-like tattoo on its face died in around 4,000BC, before realising it’s younger than Ötzi, who was killed in around 3250 BC.
While researchers can’t be sure why Ötzi had the tattoos, many think that they served as a form of acupuncture.
‘We know that they were real tattoos,’ Albert Zink, head of the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, Italy told LiveScience.
The ancient tattoo artist who applied them ‘made the incisions into the skin, and then they put in charcoal mixed with some herbs.’
The tattoos, mostly found on Ötzi’s lower back and legs, between the knee and food, may have been a way to relieve the effects of chronic pain or injuries.
Experts discovered a total of 61 tattoos on Ötzi’s body using different wavelengths of light to pick them out on the mummy’s darkened skin and in December 2015 they were confirmed to be the world’s oldest
Ötzi was thought to have done a lot of walking in the Alps, which could have resulted in joint pain in his knees and ankles.
The 61st tattoo, found on the ribcage, has puzzled researchers who suggest Ötzi may also suffered from chest pain.
If the tattoos were not for therapeutic benefit, the researchers say they could have had symbolic or religious significance.
Alternatively, they may simply be geometric shapes with no hidden meaning.
In March, 2018, figurative tattoos were been discovered on 5,000-year-old Egyptian mummies at the British Museum.
Experts said that these were the world’s earliest figurative tattoos.
The tattoos are of a wild bull and a Barbary sheep on the upper-arm of a male mummy, and S-shaped motifs on the upper-arm and shoulder of a female.
The find dates tattoos containing imagery rather than geometric patterns to 1,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Researchers said the discovery ‘transforms’ our understanding of how people lived during this period.
