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Emerging wearable flexible sensors for sweat analysis

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Abstract

Sweat, as a biofluid with the potential for noninvasive collection, provides profound insights into human health conditions, because it contains various chemicals and information to be utilized for the monitoring of well-being, stress levels, exercise, and nutrition. Recently, wearable sweat sensors have been developed as a promising substitute to conventional laboratory sweat detection methods. Such sensors are promising to realize low-cost, real-time, in situ sweat measurements, and provide great opportunities for health status evaluation analysis based on personalized big data. This review first presents an overview of wearable sweat sensors from the perspective of basic components, including materials and structures for specific sensing applications and modalities. Current strategies and specific methods of the fabrication of wearable power management are also summarized. Finally, current challenges and future directions of wearable sweat sensors are discussed.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51975513 and 52105593), the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province, China (No. LR20E050003), and the Major Research Plan of Ningbo Innovation 2025 (No. 2020Z022).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic Systems, School of Mechanical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Wenzheng Heng, Geng Yang & Kaichen Xu

  2. Andrew and Peggy Cherng Department of Medical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, 91125, USA

    Wenzheng Heng

  3. School of Mechatronic Systems Engineering, Simon Fraser University, Surrey, BC, V3T 0A3, Canada

    Woo Soo Kim

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  1. Wenzheng Heng
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  2. Geng Yang
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  3. Woo Soo Kim
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  4. Kaichen Xu
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WZH was involved in writing the original draft; GY, WSK, and KCX had contributed to writing, reviewing, and editing.

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Correspondence to Geng Yang or Kaichen Xu.

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Heng, W., Yang, G., Kim, W.S. et al. Emerging wearable flexible sensors for sweat analysis. Bio-des. Manuf. 5, 64–84 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42242-021-00171-2

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