Thin, soft, skin-integrated electronics for real-time and wireless detection of uric acid in sweat

Abstract

Wearable sweat sensors are gaining significant attention due to their unparalleled potential for noninvasive health monitoring. Sweat, as a kind of body fluid, contains informative physiological indicators that are related to personalized health status. Advances in wearable sweat sampling and routing technologies, flexible, and stretchable materials, and wireless digital technologies have led to the development of integrated sweat sensors that are comfortable, flexible, light, and intelligent. Herein, we report a flexible and integrated wearable device via incorporating a microfluidic system and a sensing chip with skin-integrated electronic format toward in-situ monitoring of uric acid (UA) in sweat that associates with gout, cardiovascular, and renal diseases. The microfluidic system validly realizes the real-time capture perspiration from human skin. The obtained detection range is 5–200 μM and the detection limit is 1.79 μM, which offers an importance diagnostic method for clinical relevant lab test. The soft and flexible features of the constructed device allows it to be mounted onto nearly anywhere on the body. We tested the sweat UA in diverse subjects and various body locations during exercise, and similar trends were also observed by using a commercial UA assay kit.