Real time chemical and mechanical human motion monitoring with aerogel-based wearable sensors

Abstract

Wearable bioelectronic systems are one of the most important tools for human health and motion monitoring. However, there is still a great challenge to fabricate high-performance flexible devices with a conformal integration of the human body and there is no single device that can collect and correlate data simultaneously from chemical and mechanical signals of the human body. We recently developed a new method to build aerogel-based strain and sweat sensors (AB-SSS) that can effectively extract real-time information by combining involuntary human motion and chemical signals due to their gradient functionalities. These sensors provide good mechanical integrity and allow high-density power generation during subtle human motion, allowing sweat monitoring by measuring pH, ion concentration, perspiration rate, etc.