Abstract Recent advancements in wearable sensor technologies have enabled real-time monitoring of physiological and biochemical signals, opening new opportunities for personalized healthcare applications. However, conventional wearable devices often depend on rigid electronics components for signal transduction, processing, and wireless communications, leading to compromised signal quality due to the mechanical mismatches with the soft, flexible nature of human skin. Additionally, current computing technologies face substantial challenges in efficiently processing these vast datasets, with limitations in scalability, high power consumption, and a heavy reliance on external internet resources, which also poses security risks. To address these challenges, we have developed a miniaturized, standalone, chip-less wearable neuromorphic system capable of simultaneously monitoring, processing, and analyzing multimodal physicochemical biomarker data (i.e., metabolites, cardiac activities, and core body temperature). By leveraging scalable printing technology, we fabricated artificial synapses that function as both sensors and analog processing units, integrating them alongside printed synaptic nodes into a compact wearable system embedded with a medical diagnostic algorithm for multimodal data processing and decision making. The feasibility of this flexible wearable neuromorphic system was demonstrated in sepsis diagnosis and patient data classification, highlighting the potential of this wearable technology for real-time medical diagnostics.
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Amphibious epidermal area networks for uninterrupted wireless data and power transfer
Abstract The human body exhibits complex, spatially distributed chemo-electro-mechanical processes that must be properly captured for emerging applications in virtual/augmented reality, precision health, activity monitoring, bionics, and more. A key factor in enabling such applications involves the seamless integration of multipurpose wearable sensors across the human body in different environments, spanning from indoor settings to outdoor landscapes. Here, we report a versatile epidermal body area network ecosystem that enables wireless power and data transmission to and from battery-free wearable sensors with continuous functionality from dry to underwater settings. This is achieved through an artificial near field propagation across the chain of biocompatible, magneto-inductive metamaterials in the form of stretchable waterborne skin patches—these are fully compatible with pre-existing consumer electronics. Our approach offers uninterrupted, self-powered communication for human status monitoring in harsh environments where traditional wireless solutions (such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or cellular) are unable to communicate reliably.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1942364
- PAR ID:
- 10488113
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer Nature
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Nature Communications
- Volume:
- 14
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2041-1723
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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