Wearable sweat biosensors on textiles for health monitoring

Abstract

With the rapid technological innovation in materials engineering and device integration, a wide variety of textile-based wearable biosensors have emerged as promising platforms for personalized healthcare, exercise monitoring, and pre-diagnostics. This paper reviews the recent progress in sweat biosensors and sensing systems integrated into textiles for wearable body status monitoring. The mechanisms of biosensors that are commonly adopted for biomarkers analysis are first introduced. The classification, fabrication methods, and applications of textile conductors in different configurations and dimensions are then summarized. Afterward, innovative strategies to achieve efficient sweat collection with textile-based sensing patches are presented, followed by an in-depth discussion on nanoengineering and system integration approaches for the enhancement of sensing performance. Finally, the challenges of textile-based sweat sensing devices associated with the device reusability, washability, stability, and fabrication reproducibility are discussed from the perspective of their practical applications in wearable healthcare.