A wearable sensor based on multifunctional conductive hydrogel for simultaneous accurate pH and tyrosine monitoring in sweat

Abstract

Flexible and wearable sweat sensors have drawn extensive attention by virtue of their continuous and real-time monitoring of molecular level information. However, current sweat-based sensors still pose several challenges, such as low accuracy for analytes detection, susceptibility to microorganism and poor mechanical performance. Herein, we demonstrated a noninvasive wearable sweat sensing patch composed of an electrochemical sensing system, and a pilocarpine-based iontophoretic system to stimulate sweat secretion. The electrochemical sensor based on tannic acid-Ag-carbon nanotube-polyaniline (TA-Ag-CNT-PANI) composite hydrogel was designed for on-body detection of pH and tyrosine (Tyr), a disease marker associated with multiple disorders, such as tyrosinemia and bulimia nervosa. The wearable sweat sensor can not only monitor the pH and Tyr in sweat simultaneously, but also further calibrate Tyr detection results with the measured pH value, so as to eliminate the effect of Tyr response variance at different pH and enhance the accuracy of the sensor. Furthermore, the presence of tannic acid chelated-Ag nanoparticles (TA-Ag NPs) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) significantly improved the conductivity and flexibility of the hydrogel and endowed the composite hydrogel with antibacterial capability. Of note, the constructed wearable sensor was capable of monitoring Tyr with enhanced accuracy in various sweats.

Keywords: Conductive hydrogel; Conductive polymer; Iontophoresis; Sweat detection; Wearable sensor.