The project provides foundational background on the essential – and so far unassessed – temporal dynamics of metabolites in sweat and their link to the physiological state of individuals. Compared to other biological fluids such as blood and saliva, sweat has been unexplored as an analytical sample for biomedical applications, but is steadily gaining interest because of the possibility to continuously obtain information in a non-obtrusive way and the rich variety of indicators present. Since one of the most demanding real-time biosensing applications is sports physiology, The project focused primarily on the sustained fitness diagnosis of athletes in collaboration with the University Hospital in Lausanne (CHUV).
Figure 1: WeCare wearable sweat sensing platform
Soft Biosensors and Patch for Body Fluids Analysis
We have created a new generation of cost-effective, soft and printed biosensors integrated with micro-fluidics into disposable and wearable patches for the monitoring of sweat. The electrochemical sensors can sense different analytes such as the electrolyte content (Na+, K+, pH, etc), metabolites (glucose, lactate) and hormones (cortisol) and proteins.
The sensing patch consists of:
- Sweat collector based on absorbent materials, which can provide continuous suction of sample during the device operation;
- Soft substrate that contains microfluidics channels and chambers to collect sweat and to drive it to the sensors;
- Organic electrochemical transistors and potentiometic sensors made by printed technologies (i.e. inkjet and screen printing) and biofunctionalised for detection of various sweat biomarkers;
- Temperature, pH and sweat-rate sensors for accurate real-time sweat analysis and data corrections.
- Integrated Iontophoretic system to induce sweat generation for measurements on sedentary people.
Figure 2: Organic electrochemical transistors integrated with microfluidic and biofonctionalised for the detection of various analytes in biofluids.
The system has been validated while performing measurements on athletes in collaboration with the department of Sports Medecine at the University Hospital in Lausanne (CHUV).
Figure 3: Smart sweat analysis patch being tested on an athlete.
Scientific publications
S. Wang, M. Rovira, S. Demuru, C. Lafaye, et al., Multisensing wearables for real-time monitoring of sweat electrolyte biomarkers during exercise and analysis on their correlation with core body temperature, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems, vol. 17(4) (2023) 808-816.
S. Demuru, Kim, M. E. Chazli, S. Bruce, M. Dupertuis, P.-A. Binz, M. Saubade, C. Lafaye, D. Briand, Antibody-coated wearable organic electrochemical transistors for cortisol detection in human sweat, ACS Sensors, 7 (2022) 2721-2731.
S. Demuru, C.-H. Huang, K. Parvez, R. Worsley, G. Mattana, B. Piro, V. Noël, C. Casiraghi, D.Briand, All-inkjet-printed graphene-gated organic electrochemical transistors on polymeric foil as highly sensitive enzymatic biosensors, ACS Appl. Nano Mater., 5(1) (2022) 1664–1673.
P. Kunnel, S. Demuru, C. Lafaye, M. Saubade, D. Briand, Printed Iontophoretic-Integrated Wearable Microfluidic Sweat-Sensing Patch for On-Demand Point-Of-Care Sweat Analysis, Advanced Materials Technologies, 6 (2021) 2000910.
S. Demuru, B. P. Kunnel, D. Briand, Thin film organic electrochemical transistors based on hybrid PANI/ PEDOT:PSS active layers for enhanced pH sensing, Biosensors and Bioelectronics : X, 7 (2021) 100065.
S. Demuru, B. P. Kunnel, D. Briand, Real-Time Multi-Ion Detection in the Sweat Concentration Range Enabled by Flexible, Printed and Microfluidics-Integrated Organic Transistor Arrays, Advanced Materials Technologies 5 (2020) 2000328.
S. Demuru, R. Haque, M. O. Joho, A. Bionaz, P. van der Wal, D. Briand, “3D-Integration of Printed Electrochemical Sensors in PET Microfluidics for Biochemical Sensing”, IEEE, proceeding at: Transducers & Eurosensors XXXIII, 2019 June 23-27, Berlin, Germany, 2464-2467
S. Demuru, A. Marette, W. Kooli, P. Junier, D. Briand, “Flexible Organic Electrochemical Transistor with Functionalized Inkjet-Printed Gold Gate for Bacteria Sensing”, IEEE, proceeding at: Transducers & Eurosensors XXXIII, 2019 June 23-27, Berlin, Germany, 2519-2522
Funding
SNF Sinergia WeCare 2018-2022
Contact person
Danick Briand