Pro-Healing Zwitterionic Skin Sensor Enables Multi-Indicator Distinction and Continuous Real-Time Monitoring

In both artificial electronic and ionic skins, the distinction of multi-stimuli response in a single sensing unit is challenging, due to unavoidable mutual signal interference. Here, a zwitterionic skin sensor system that can continuously monitor and differentiate three-stimuli-responsive information in real-time is designed. This sandwich-structured sensor system is based on a zwitterionic thermo-glucose-sensitive skin-like hydrogel at its upper and lower layers with a middle isolation elastomer layer, enabling monitoring and distinction of temperature, mechanical and glucose information without signal interference: 1) the capacitance of the upper/lower layers as glucose-temperature-insensitive is variable to measure strain; 2) the resistance of the upper hydrogel as glucose-insensitive is variable to measure strain and temperature; and 3) the resistance of the lower hydrogel can detect three indicators. Based on the skin sensor system, a smart wound dressing is developed to pro-heal chronic diabetic wounds and enable continuous real-time monitoring of three indicators-infection, swelling, and blood glucose. This work provides a new method of real-time monitoring and the distinction of multi-stimuli response in a wearable device.

Automated summary

A zwitterionic skin sensor system has been developed to continuously monitor and differentiate three-stimuli-responsive information in real-time, avoiding signal interference. This system utilizes a sandwich structure to monitor temperature, mechanical, and glucose information through variations in capacitance and resistance in different layers, which can be used for smart wound dressings to monitor chronic diabetic wounds.