Multi-Bioinspired Droplet Self-Actuated Sweat Transport Platform for Continuous Wearable Biochemical Monitoring

Wearable sweat sensors exhibit significant promise in the realm of smart healthcare. Efficient and non-contaminating continuous sweat collection, transport, and disposal are crucial for enhancing detection accuracy. In this study, a novel wearable sweat sensor is presented that integrates various biomimetic structures, including cactus-inspired spine, shorebird-inspired conical through-holes, and frog-foot-inspired micro-grooves. These structures facilitate sweat droplets to be automatically transported from the skin to the sensing chamber and discharged without external power. First, theoretical analysis, simulation, and experiments based on self-driven droplet mechanisms to determine the optimal transport efficiency parameters for biomimetic structures are conducted. Next, a novel sweat transport module is fabricated through ultra-precision 3D printing according to these optimal parameters. And this module has excellent sweat collection performance contrastively. Finally, the novel biomimetic sweat transport module is integrated with a high-sensitivity glucose detection electrode, resulting in a wearable sweat glucose detection system. Human experiments monitoring glucose metabolism in sweat verify the correlation between glucose concentrations in blood and sweat, which proves the feasibility of reflecting changes in the body's circulatory system by monitoring changes in sweat composition. A wearable sweat sensor that is inspired by multiple biological water collection structures has been demonstrated. The rapid collection and discharge of sweat are realized by the droplet self-driving mechanism. The glucose concentration in sweat is detected and shows a great consistency with that in blood. This work will promote the progress toward the practical application of wearable sweat sensors. image