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Wearable graphene sensors use ambient light to monitor health

Graphene coated with nanoparticles has been used to make wearable light sensors that measure the human pulse and blood oxygen levels from ambient light passing through tissue, offering a potential platform for health-care monitoring.
  1. Deji Akinwande

    1. Deji Akinwande is in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Microelectronics Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78758, USA.

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  2. Dmitry Kireev

    1. Dmitry Kireev is in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Microelectronics Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78758, USA.

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The popularity of wearable technology has risen enormously, with the US market projected to be in the tens of billions of dollars by 2022 (see go.nature.com/33tcein). However, the effectiveness of the most common wearable devices is hindered by the physical specifications of their components: although the device is often embedded in a flexible soft shell, the main parts, such as the sensors and electronics, are still rigid1,2. Now, writing in Science Advances, Polat et al.3 report a class of truly flexible, transparent wearable device that is based on graphene covered with a layer of semiconducting nanoparticles known as quantum dots. Impressively, the devices measure various vital signs using only ambient light as a signal.

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Nature 576, 220-221 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03483-7

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