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The Future of Healthcare Lies in Sweat Powered Electronic Bioskin
A team at CalTech has developed a flexible rubber layer embedded with sensors and biofuel cells powered by human sweat. It can deliver round the clock data on heart rate, temperature, blood sugar levels and detect metabolic waste products which could be used in the diagnosis of disease.
The team leader, Wei Gao, Assistant Professor in the Andrew and Peggy Cherng Department of Medical Engineering, claims that the e-skin could even provide information on nerve signals controlling our muscles. Previous incarnations of medical monitoring devices have been hampered by the continuous energy requirements needed to run such a system. Until now, they have relied on bulky batteries, which limit the size of the wearable patches.
This latest iteration uses sustainable biofuel cells which break down the lactate present in human sweat, generating electricity and producing water and another harmless by-product of metabolism, pyruvate. The biocells are made from carbon nanotubes infused with a mesh containing a platinum-cobalt catalyst plus an enzyme to break down the lactate.
These slimline cells are capable of generating a continuous and stable supply of electricity of as much as several milliwatts per centimetre squared, for multiple days. The team hope to go on refining their e-skin and fuel…