Conductometric Flexible CuO-Based Sweat-Loss Monitoring Sensor for Future Wearable Technology in Healthcare

Healthcare tracking supports early diagnosis of illnesses, realtime tracking of the impacts of therapy and treatment, and tracking of casesof human health. Based on this, real-time tracking of sweat loss provides aneasy, convenient, and noninvasive approach to the early diagnosis of physicalillness in individuals. To date, copper oxide (CuO) as a nanostructuredsemiconductor metal-oxide is regarded as a hopefully p-type sensingmaterial. The corresponding sweat rate monitoring systems were fabricatedusing a repeatable and cost-effective SILAR system using a cellulose acetatebased organic substrate. To provide a practical application, we investigatedthe working efficiency of Al:CuO under room conditions since most clinicaland healthcare industries operate under ambient temperature. Fabricatedflexible devices immediately respond to the implementation of the sweatsolution and reach a steady-state value in a short time. It can be obtainedfrom experimental results that the sweat-loss monitoring performances of CuO-based devices can be enhanced by employing Aldoping. The increment in the sensing efficacy was interpreted in terms of structural and morphological characterization and electricaldata. Our designed flexible thin film-based system can be used in conjunction with a customized wearable, healthcare industryintegrated, low-cost fabrication source.</p