Self-powered wearable biosensors

Abstract

Electronic skin (e-skin) is expected to play a crucial role in the next generation of robotics and medical devices. However, existing e-skin-based sensing platforms primarily focus on monitoring physical parameters and rely on the power from the batteries or near field communication, which significantly hinders their broad use and sustainability toward continuous wireless sensing. Here I will introduce our recent works on flexible self-powered integrated electronic skin for multiplexed metabolic sensing in situ. These battery-free wearable sensors contain biosensors as well as highly efficient energy harvesters (such as biofuel cells and triboelectric nanogenerators) that utilize a unique integration of 0 dimensional to 3 dimensional nanomaterials to achieve remarkably high power intensity and long-term stability. Such battery-free soft wearable systems with highly efficient energy harvesting from the human body hold great promise for robotics and personalized healthcare applications.