Advanced Materials and Assembly Strategies for Wearable Biosensors: A Review

Abstract

Recent technological advances of soft functional materials and their assembly into wearable (i.e., on-skin) biosensors lead to the development of ground-breaking biomedical applications ranging from wearable health monitoring to drug delivery and to human-robot interactions. These wearable biosensors are capable of unobtrusively interfacing with the human skin and enabling long-term reliable monitoring of clinically useful biosignals associated with health and other conditions affecting well-being. Scalable assembly of diverse wearable biosensors has been realized through the elaborate combination of intrinsically stretchable materials including organic polymers or/and low-dimensional inorganic nanomaterials. In this Chapter, we review various types of wearable biosensors within the context of human health monitoring with a focus of their constituent materials, mechanics designs, and large-scale assembly strategies. In addition, we discuss the current challenges and potential future research directions at the end of this chapter.