Nutrition measurement has broad applications in science, ranging from dietary assessment, to food monitoring, personalized health, and more. Despite its importance, there are currently no tools that offer continuous cotracking of nutrients direct from food. In this study, the multiscale engineering of silk biopolymer‐interlayer sensors is reported for comonitoring of nutrients. By manipulating various nano‐ to mesostructural properties of such biosensors, sensors are obtained with programmable sensitivity and selectivity to salts, sugars, and oils/fats. Notably, this approach requires no specialized nanomaterials or delicate biomolecules. Programmable biosensors are further formatted for wireless readout and characteristics of these passive, wireless nutrient monitors are studied in vitro. As a proof of concept, the discrimination and comonitoring of salt, sugar, and fat content direct from real, complex foods such as milk, meat, soup, and tea drinks are demonstrated. It is anticipated that such sensors can be utilized in emerging dietary tools for applications across food tracking and human health. In addition, such strategies are expected in structural engineering of sensors to be adaptable to existing or emerging selective or partially selective sensors.
This content will become publicly available on November 1, 2025
Ion consumption plays key roles in maintaining bodily homeostasis and health. Here passive wireless, multimineral comonitoring arrays are studied that may potentially be utilized for emerging applications in precision nutrition. RF biosensors targeting select minerals (calcium or magnesium demonstrated herein) are built from integrating ion‐selective membranes within a broadside‐coupled split ring resonator architecture. RF sensors are typically monitored one at a time and such platforms often are incapable of comeasuring multiple confounding components. To address this challenge, this sensor arrays are further directly integrated alongside a conformal, custom readout coil that optimizes multi‐RF sensor readout. Such optimized networks exhibit enhanced signal clarity, further facilitating coextraction of multiple ion components. A simple method of extracting multimineral concentrations from food even despite the imperfect selectivity of divalent ion‐selective membranes is introduced. This passive wireless, zero‐electronic ion‐monitoring platform integrates seamlessly on foodware or packaging, possessing many applications in food measurement.
more » « less- Award ID(s):
- 1942364
- PAR ID:
- 10568557
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Advanced Sensor Research
- Volume:
- 3
- Issue:
- 11
- ISSN:
- 2751-1219
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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