Abstract
Development of wearable devices for in situ monitoring biological analytes in sweat has been fueled up in the past few years. Although microfluidic thread/paper-based analytical device (μTPAD) fulfills the requirements of wearable systems on flexibility and biocompatibility, it has not been employed as a sensing system for the in situ sweat analysis. In this work, we developed a wearable μTPAD containing a cotton thread and a functionalized filter paper for non-invasive, quantitative and in situ monitoring of human sweat glucose with the assistance of a smartphone. The oxygen plasma was applied to tailor the wicking property of the cotton thread. Amounts of enzymes and reagents on the filter papers were optimized to achieve the high-performance colorimetric sensing of glucose. The as-prepared device possesses a dynamic range of 50–250 μΜ and a detection limit of ~ 35 μΜ. Because of its great wearability and compatibility with conventional textile industry, the μTPAD was integrated with an arm guard to sensitively detect glucose in human sweat. This work may provide a low-cost, easy to use wearable device based on the cotton thread and filter paper for human sweat analysis.
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This work was financially supported by Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (XDJK2019B002) and Chongqing Engineering Research Center for Micro-Nano Biomedical Materials and Devices.
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Xiao, G., He, J., Chen, X. et al. A wearable, cotton thread/paper-based microfluidic device coupled with smartphone for sweat glucose sensing. Cellulose 26, 4553–4562 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-019-02396-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-019-02396-y