Triboelectric Nanogenerator Enabled Sweat Extraction and Power Activation for Sweat Monitoring

Abstract

Wearable sweat sensors can detect and monitor various substances in sweat, providing valuable information for healthcare monitoring and clinical diagnostics. Recent advances in flexible electronic technologies have enabled the development of wearable sweat sensors that can measure sweat rate and biochemical substances in real time, although several challenges remain, such as power management and sweat extraction issues. Here, a passive sweat extraction strategy as well as a self‐powered monitoring system (SEMS) is reported to be designed for sedentary individuals, i.e., elders. The SEMS system comprises a wearable triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) for sweat extraction, a sweat‐activated battery (SAB) as the integrated power source, carbachol‐loaded iontophoresis electrodes for sweat extraction, microfluidics with biosensors for detecting physiological information in sweat, and near field communication (NFC)‐based wireless microelectronics for data communication, processing, and collection. By tapping the TENG, sedentary people can passively extract sweat based on the iontophoresis process, allowing the sensors to detect biological information in sweat. The good flexibility of the SEMS device enables real‐time and non‐invasive detection of sweat analytes in a wearable format. This system offers a new strategy of sweat collection and analysis for the elderly group, and therefore can help to understand human physiology and personalize health monitoring deeply.

Recent advances of sweat sampling, sensing, energy-harvesting and data-display toward flexible sweat electronics

“…A tattoo-based alcohol sensor is developed by Kim for noninvasive detection of alcohol in perspiration. The wearable alcohol sensing platform combines flexible wireless electronics with an iontophoretic-biosensing temporary tattoo device [Figure 5D] [62] . Recently, Xu et al proposed a novel iontophoresis-based sweat collection powered by a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG).…”

“…Kim et al reported a tattoo-based alcohol monitoring platform that combines sweat-inducing iontophoresis with an amperometric enzymatic biosensing method. This alcohol biosensor obtained a detection range of 0-36 mM and a sensitivity of 0.362 ± 0.009 μA•mM -1 , which can provide real-time status of personal alcohol consumption in practice [62] . All these developments contribute to the field of personalized health monitoring using sweat-based metabolite analysis.…”

“…Copyright 2017, National Academy of Sciences Publishing Group; (D) Tattoo-based iontophoretic-biosensor. Reproduced with permission [62] . Copyright 2016, American Chemical Society; (E) Triboelectric nanogenerator Enabled Sweat Extraction.…”

“…Figures 3A, 3C, 3D, 4A, 4E, 5B, 5D, 6B, 6F, 7A, 7C, 7E, 7F, 8E, 9E, 9F, 12A and 12B are cited from the researches in refs [16,47,49,52,54,55,[60][61][62]69,76,104,108,111,139,149] respectively. The citations include images that depict specific body parts of the participants in the experiment, aiming to present the research results and experimental methods in a more intuitive manner.…”

Electronic Skin for Health Monitoring Systems: Properties, Functions, and Applications

“…Compared to qualitative color changes, wireless technologies represent the data more accurately. Currently, common wireless technologies include near field communication (NFC), [ 240–242 ] Bluetooth, [ 243–252 ] radio frequency identification (RFID), [ 253 ] and wireless fidelity (Wi‐Fi). [ 254,255 ] Yu et al.…”