Abstract
Wearable sweat sensors are emerging as promising platforms for personalized and real-time tracking of evolving health and fitness parameters. While most wearable sweat sensors focus on tracking biomarker concentration profiles, sweat secretion rate is a key metric with broad implications for assessing hydration, cardiac, and neural conditions. Here we present a wearable microfluidic sensor for continuous sweat rate measurement. A discrete impedimetric sensing scheme relying on interdigitated electrodes within a microfluidic sweat collector allows for precise and selective sweat rate measurement across a broad physiological range. Integration of a manually activated pressure pump to expel sweat from the device prevents sensor saturation and enables continuous sweat rate tracking over hours. By enabling broad range and prolonged sweat rate measurement, this platform tackles a key obstacle to realizing meaningful and actionable sweat sensing for applications in exercise physiology and medicine.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1156-1164 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | ACS Sensors |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 22 Apr 2022 |
| MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Funding
This work was supported by the Berkeley Sensors and Actuators Center (BSAC) and the Bakar Fellowship. Part of the facilities at VTT were funded by the Academy of Finland Research Infrastructure “Printed Intelligence Infrastructure” (PII-FIRI, grant no. 320020). N.D. acknowledges support from the National Defense Science & Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship Program.
Keywords
- continuous monitoring
- flexible sensor
- printed electronics
- sweat rate
- sweat sensor
- wearable electronics