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A stretchable epidermal sweat sensing platform with an integrated printed battery and electrochromic display

Nature Electronics volume 5, pages 694–705 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Wearable electronic devices are of potential use in various health monitoring applications including non-invasive chemical sensing. However, such platforms are typically limited by the need to connect to external devices for power and data visualization. Here we report a stretchable epidermal sweat sensing platform that integrates a stretchable battery and a low-power digital electrochromic display. The patch can operate as a standalone device to directly display the concentration of various electrolytes or metabolites in sweat, such as glucose and lactate, without any wired or wireless connection to external devices. It consists of electrochemical sensors, a stretchable Ag2O–Zn battery, ten individually addressable electrochromic pixels and a small microcontroller unit. All the components and interconnections, except the microcontroller, are fabricated via the high-throughput screen printing of customized elastomeric or silver inks. The integrated system is robust to mechanical deformation and is unaffected by 1,500 stretching cycles at 20% strain. The electrochromic display exhibits stability for 10,000 on/off cycles, and the battery can power 14,000 sensing sessions over a week-long use.

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Fig. 1: System overview of the all-printed skin-interfaced ECD sensing patch.
Fig. 2: Characterization of ECD.
Fig. 3: Characterization of stretchable battery.
Fig. 4: Device operation for potentiometric pH and sodium sensing.
Fig. 5: Device operation for glucose and lactate sensors.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The code for programming the MCU is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

L.Y. and K.N.K. recognize funding support from Samsung Display. K.N.K. recognizes funding from the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2018R1A6A3A03011252). We would like to thank Kraton Corporation for providing all the SEBS samples.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Lu Yin, Mengzhu Cao, Kyeong Nam Kim.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Nanoengineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Lu Yin, Mengzhu Cao, Kyeong Nam Kim, Muyang Lin, Jong-Min Moon, Juliane R. Sempionatto, Jialu Yu, Ruixiao Liu, Connor Wicker, Alexander Trifonov, Fangyu Zhang, Hongjie Hu, Jose R. Moreto, Sheng Xu & Joseph Wang

  2. Samsung Display, Yongin‐si, South Korea

    Jaekyung Go

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Contributions

L.Y., K.N.K. and J.W. conceived the idea for this work. L.Y., M.C., K.N.K., A.T. and J.W. designed the experiments and wrote the manuscript. L.Y., M.C., J.-M.M., J.R.S., C.W., A.T., F.Z. and H.H. conducted the experiments. L.Y., M.C., J.Y. and R.L. fabricated the samples. M.L. designed and programmed the electronics. J.R.M. conducted the fluid simulations. A.T., J.G., S.X. and J.W. provided suggestions for the experiment designs. L.Y., M.C., K.N.K., J.R.S. and J.W. designed the figures and revised the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Joseph Wang.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–25 and Tables 1–6.

Supplementary Video 1

Stretching different parts of the patch.

Supplementary Video 2

Applying a varying sensor input voltage as different parts of the patch were stretched.

Supplementary Video 3

Switching speed of the ECD pixels.

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Yin, L., Cao, M., Kim, K.N. et al. A stretchable epidermal sweat sensing platform with an integrated printed battery and electrochromic display. Nat Electron 5, 694–705 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-022-00843-6

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