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Abstract Skin‐like robust materials with prominent sensing performance have potential applications in flexible bioelectronics. However, it remains challenging to achieve mutually exclusive properties simultaneously including low interfacial impedance, high stretchability, sensitivity, and electrical resilience. Herein, a material and structure design concept of mixed ion‐electron conduction and mechanical interlocking structure is adopted to fabricate high‐performance mechanical‐bioelectrical dual‐modal composites with large stretchability, excellent mechanoelectrical stability, low interfacial impedance, and good biocompatibility. Flower‐like conductive metal‐organic frameworks (cMOFs) with enhanced conductivity through the overlapped level of metal‐ligand orbital are assembled, which bridge carbon nanotubes (denoted as cMOFs‐b‐CNTs). Then, precursor of poly(styrene‐block‐butadiene‐block‐styrene)/ionic liquid penetrates the pores and cavities in cMOFs‐b‐CNTs‐based network fabricated via filtration process, creating a semi‐embedded structure via mechanical interlocking. Thus, the mixed ion‐electron conduction and semi‐embedded structure endow the as‐prepared composites with a low interfacial impedance (51.60/28.90 kΩ at 10/100 Hz), wide sensing range (473%), high sensitivity (2195.29), rapid response/recovery time (60/85 ms), low limit of detection (0.05%), and excellent durability (>5000 cycles to 50% strain). Demonstrations of multifunctional mechanical‐bioelectrical dual‐modal sensors for in vivo/vitro monitoring physiological motions, electrophysiological activities, and urinary bladder activities validate the possibility for practical uses in biomedical research areas. This concept creates opportunities for the construction of durable skin‐like sensing materials.more » « lessFree, publicly-accessible full text available August 1, 2026
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Abstract The cost‐effective and scalable synthesis and patterning of soft nanomaterial composites with improved electrical conductivity and mechanical stretchability remains challenging in wearable devices. This work reports a scalable, low‐cost fabrication approach to directly create and pattern crumpled porous graphene/NiS2nanocomposites with high mechanical stretchability and electrical conductivity through laser irradiation combined with electrodeposition and a pre‐strain strategy. With modulated mechanical stretchability and electrical conductivity, the crumpled graphene/NiS2nanocomposite can be readily patterned into target geometries for application in a standalone stretchable sensing platform. By leveraging the electrical energy harvested from the kinetic motion from wearable triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) and stored in micro‐supercapacitor arrays (MSCAs) to drive biophysical sensors, the system is demonstrated to monitor human motions, body temperature, and toxic gas in the exposed environment. The material selections, design strategies, and fabrication approaches from this study provide functional nanomaterial composites with tunable properties for future high‐performance bio‐integrated electronics.more » « lessFree, publicly-accessible full text available April 1, 2026
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Abstract Although continuous and non‐invasive measurements of sweat biomarkers may provide vital health information, sweat collection often involves intense physical activities or chemical/thermal stimuli. The natural body sweat during endogenous metabolic or stress processes, secreted at much lower rates at rest, may be continuously analyzed using microfluidic devices integrated with hydrophilic rigid fillers; however, the sweat uptake and accumulation in thermoregulatory processes take too long for near‐real‐time measurements. This work provides an innovative body fluid collection strategy using a granular hydrogel scaffold (GHS), facilitating osmotic and capillary effects to uptake and transfer an ultralow amount of sweat into a microfluidic device at rest. Taken together with a spiral microfluidic channel, the GHS‐embedded microfluidics reduce the evaporation of collected sweat and store it in a sensing well for near‐real‐time measurements. Integrating the sweat‐collecting system with an enzymatic gold‐graphene nanocomposite‐modified laser‐induced graphene (LIG) electrode and a LIG‐based pH sensor enables the accurate continuous on‐body detection of sweat lactate during normal daily activities at a low perspiration rate. The novel combination of a GHS‐integrated microfluidic system with a low‐cost, flexible, sensitive, and stable LIG‐based sensing system provides an accessible technology for sweat‐based biosensing during normal daily activities.more » « less
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Abstract Nanomaterial‐based stretchable electronics composed of conductive nanomaterials in elastomer can seamlessly integrate with human skin to imperceptibly capture electrophysiological signals. Despite the use of transfer printing to form embedded structures, it remains challenging to facilely and stably integrate conductive nanomaterials with thin, low‐modulus, adhesive elastomers. Here, a facile‐yet‐simple laser‐induced graphene (LIG)‐assisted patterning and transfer method is demonstrated to integrate patterned silver nanowires onto an ultra‐low modulus silicone adhesive as ultra‐conformal epidermal electrodes. The resulting thin epidermal electrodes of ≈50 µm exhibit a low sheet resistance (0.781 Ω sq−1), tissue‐like Young's modulus (0.53 MPa), strong self‐adhesion, and excellent breathability. The breathable electrodes dynamically conformed to the skin with low contact impedance allow for long‐term, high‐fidelity monitoring of electrophysiological signals in complex environments (even during exercise and heavy sweating). Moreover, the LIG‐assisted transfer can provide a robust interface to establish a stable connection between the soft electrodes and rigid hardware. The large‐scale fabrication further provides an eight‐channel electromyography system combined with a deep learning algorithm for gesture classification and recognition with remarkable accuracy (95.4%). The results from this study also provide design guidelines and fabrication methods of the next‐generation epidermal electronics for long‐term dynamic health monitoring, prosthetic control, and human‐robot collaborations.more » « less
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Abstract Stretchable triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) represent a new class of energy‐harvesting devices for powering wearable devices. However, most of them are associated with poor stretchability, low stability, and limited substrate material choices. This work presents the design and demonstration of highly stretchable and stable TENGs based on liquid metalel ectrodes with different phases. The conductive and fluidic properties of eutectic gallium‐indium (EGaIn) in the serpentine microfluidic channel ensure the robust performance of the EGaIn‐based TENG upon stretching over several hundred percent. The bi‐phasic EGaIn (bGaIn) from oxidation lowers surface tension and increases adhesion for printing on diverse substrates with high output performance parameters. The optimization of the electrode shapes in the bGaIn‐based TENGs can reduce the device footprint and weight, while enhancing stretchability. The applications of the EGaIn‐ and bGaIn‐based TENG include smart elastic bands for human movement monitoring and smart carpets with integrated data transmission/processing modules for headcount monitoring/control. Combining the concept of origami in the paper‐based bGaIn TENG can reduce the device footprint to improve output performance per unit area. The integration of bGaIn‐TENG on a self‐healing polymer substrate with corrosion resistance against acidic and alkaline solutions further facilitates its use in various challenging and extreme environments.more » « less
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Abstract The erratic, intermittent, and unpredictable nature of sweat production, resulting from physiological or psychological fluctuations, poses intricacies to consistently and accurately sample and evaluate sweat biomarkers. Skin‐interfaced microfluidic devices that rely on colorimetric mechanisms for semi‐quantitative detection are particularly susceptible to these inaccuracies due to variations in sweat secretion rate or instantaneous volume. This work introduces a skin‐interfaced colorimetric bifluidic sweat device with two synchronous channels to quantify sweat rate and biomarkers in real‐time, even during uncertain sweat activities. In the proposed bifluidic‐distance metric approach, with one channel to measure sweat rate and quantify collected sweat volume, the other channel can provide an accurate analysis of the biomarkers based on the collected sweat volume. The closed channel design also reduces evaporation and resists contamination from the external environment. The feasibility of the device is highlighted in a proof‐of‐the‐concept demonstration to analyze sweat chloride for evaluating hydration status and sweat glucose for assessing glucose levels. The low‐cost yet highly accurate device provides opportunities for clinical sweat analysis and disease screening in remote and low‐resource settings. The developed device platform can be facilely adapted for the other biomarkers when corresponding colorimetric reagents are exploited.more » « less
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Abstract The concentration of dopamine (DA) and tyrosine (Tyr) reflects the condition of patients with Parkinson's disease, whereas moderate paracetamol (PA) can help relieve their pain. Therefore, real‐time measurements of these bioanalytes have important clinical implications for patients with Parkinson's disease. However, previous sensors suffer from either limited sensitivity or complex fabrication and integration processes. This work introduces a simple and cost‐effective method to prepare high‐quality, flexible titanium dioxide (TiO2) thin films with highly reactive (001)‐facets. The as‐fabricated TiO2film supported by a carbon cloth electrode (i.e., TiO2–CC) allows excellent electrochemical specificity and sensitivity to DA (1.390 µA µM−1 cm−2), Tyr (0.126 µA µM−1 cm−2), and PA (0.0841 µA µM−1 cm−2). More importantly, accurate DA concentration in varied pH conditions can be obtained by decoupling them within a single differential pulse voltammetry measurement without additional sensing units. The TiO2–CC electrochemical sensor can be integrated into a smart diaper to detect the trace amount of DA or an integrated skin‐interfaced patch with microfluidic sampling and wireless transmission units for real‐time detection of the sweat Try and PA concentration. The wearable sensor based on TiO2–CC prepared by facile manufacturing methods holds great potential in the daily health monitoring and care of patients with neurological disorders.more » « less
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Abstract Objective.Transcutaneous electrical stimulation of peripheral nerves is a common technique to assist or rehabilitate impaired muscle activation. However, conventional stimulation paradigms activate nerve fibers synchronously with action potentials time-locked with stimulation pulses. Such synchronous activation limits fine control of muscle force due to synchronized force twitches. Accordingly, we developed a subthreshold high-frequency stimulation waveform with the goal of activating axons asynchronously.Approach.We evaluated our waveform experimentally and through model simulations. During the experiment, we delivered continuous subthreshold pulses at frequencies of 16.67, 12.5, or 10 kHz transcutaneously to the median and ulnar nerves. We obtained high-density electromyographic (EMG) signals and fingertip forces to quantify the axonal activation patterns. We used a conventional 30 Hz stimulation waveform and the associated voluntary muscle activation for comparison. We modeled stimulation of biophysically realistic myelinated mammalian axons using a simplified volume conductor model to solve for extracellular electric potentials. We compared the firing properties under kHz and conventional 30 Hz stimulation.Main results.EMG activity evoked by kHz stimulation showed high entropy values similar to voluntary EMG activity, indicating asynchronous axon firing activity. In contrast, we observed low entropy values in EMG evoked by conventional 30 Hz stimulation. The muscle forces evoked by kHz stimulation also showed more stable force profiles across repeated trials compared with 30 Hz stimulation. Our simulation results provide direct evidence of asynchronous firing patterns across a population of axons in response to kHz frequency stimulation, while 30 Hz stimulation elicited synchronized time-locked responses across the population.Significance.We demonstrate that the continuous subthreshold high-frequency stimulation waveform can elicit asynchronous axon firing patterns, which can lead to finer control of muscle forces.more » « less
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Abstract General movements (GMs) have been widely used for the early clinical evaluation of infant brain development, allowing immediate evaluation of potential development disorders and timely rehabilitation. The infants’ general movements can be captured digitally, but the lack of quantitative assessment and well‐trained clinical pediatricians presents an obstacle for many years to achieve wider deployment, especially in low‐resource settings. There is a high potential to explore wearable sensors for movement analysis due to outstanding privacy, low cost, and easy‐to‐use features. This work presents a sparse sensor network with soft wireless IMU devices (SWDs) for automatic early evaluation of general movements in infants. The sparse network consisting of only five sensor nodes (SWDs) with robust mechanical properties and excellent biocompatibility continuously and stably captures full‐body motion data. The proof‐of‐the‐concept clinical testing with 23 infants showcases outstanding performance in recognizing neonatal activities, confirming the reliability of the system. Taken together with a tiny machine learning algorithm, the system can automatically identify risky infants based on the GMs, with an accuracy of up to 100% (99.9%). The wearable sparse sensor network with an artificial intelligence‐based algorithm facilitates intelligent evaluation of infant brain development and early diagnosis of development disorders.more » « less
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Free, publicly-accessible full text available August 1, 2026
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