Bionic sensors for non-invasive health monitoring

像智能手表这样的可穿戴电子产品是很受欢迎的小玩意，但它们作为生物传感器的价值有限，因为它们不能直接与皮肤接触。虽然体温、心率和血氧含量是评估个体整体健康状况的重要因素，但这些参数缺乏通过汗液排出的生物代谢物所包含的信息。许多代谢物浓度的存在或波动可能与医疗状况直接相关。高血糖水平可能表明患有糖尿病，而乳酸盐的存在则表明疲劳和高皮质醇（一种类固醇激素）水平通常表明压力水平增加。该研究金的扩展将侧重于将柔性和自我修复的有机半导体集成到皮肤可穿戴生物传感器中，用于非侵入性健康监测。可穿戴传感器将是完全保形的，类似于标准的创可贴，并且足够坚固，可以直接佩戴在皮肤上。通过仔细地功能化活性材料，有机半导体，我们的目标是实现高选择性和灵敏度，能够记录通过汗液在皮肤上排泄的生物代谢物的微小变化。直接应用于人体皮肤的这种重量轻且坚固的可穿戴传感器的实现，将使相关生物代谢物的持续监测成为现实，为更具成本效益的预防性医疗保健和以患者为中心的护理开辟新的途径。

Wearable electronics like smart watches are popular gadgets, their value as biosensor is limited however as they are not directly interfaced with the skin. While body temperature, heart rate and blood oxygen content and important factors to evaluate the overall health of an individual, these parameters lack the information contained in biological metabolites excreted through sweat. The presence or fluctuation in concentration of many metabolites can be directly related to a medical condition. High glucose levels could be indicative of diabetes, whilst the presence of lactate would indicate fatigue and high cortisol, a steroid hormone, levels often pointing towards increased stress levels.This fellowship extension will focus on the integration of flexible and self-repairing organic semiconductors into skin-wearable biosensors for non-invasive health monitoring. The wearable sensors will be fully conformal, similar to a standard band aid, and robust enough to be worn directly on the skin. By carefully functionalising the active material, the organic semiconductor, we aim to achieve a high selectivity and sensitivity, able to record the minute changes of biological metabolites excreted through sweat on the skin.The realisation of such light weight and robust wearable sensors directly applied to the human skin, would make the continous monitoring of relevant biological metabolites a reality, opening new avenues for more cost-effective preventive healthcare and patient-centred care.