Abstract
Monitoring sweat secretion rate is essential for uncovering underlying physical conditions like hyperhidrosis, mental stress, and neural disorders. Often, flexible microfluidic sweat rate monitoring devices use tape as a means of attachment to the skin to tightly seal the collection area. While these single-use, adhesive-backed devices have lightweight and thin interfaces for mounting on the skin, their form factor complicates their potential integration with available commercial wearables, such as smartwatches. Here, a tape-free device, consisting of a 3D-printed sweat collector with a concave surface that is strapped onto the skin to form an effective seal, is presented. The materials, structure, and dimensions of the sweat collector are optimized for conformal device-to-skin contact and efficient capture of sweat. The collector is interfaced with a fluidic microchannel with embedded electrodes for continuous digital monitoring of sweat rate. Long-term exercise-induced local sweat rate from multiple body locations in both multi-subject and longitudinal studies is measured, depicting the correlation between the measured sweat profile and total body fluid loss. The simple installation procedure and reusability of this tape-free device make it a good candidate for integration with the band of a watch.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 2201187 |
Journal | Advanced Materials Technologies |
Volume | 8 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 24 Mar 2023 |
MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Funding
This work was partially supported by National Science Foundation through grant NASCENT‐1160494, and by the Berkeley Sensors and Actuators Center (BSAC) and the Bakar Fellowship. Part of the facilities at VTT was 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
- 3D printed
- fluid loss
- leakage-free
- reusable
- sweat rate
- tape-free
- wearable devices