A perspective on flexible sensors in developing diagnostic devices

Abstract

The rapid development of flexible electronics, human–computer interaction, wireless technology, the Internet of Things, and internet health is promoting fast-past innovation in the field of wearable medical devices. Wearable devices are a category of personalized devices that include specialized sensors, which can make conformal contact with the human body or tissue to collect biochemical or electrophysiological signals. Hence, the development of high-precision flexible devices is attracting increasing interest as they can provide real-time medical data for monitoring the physiological state of patients and their diagnosis and treatment, as well as help individuals to pursue a healthier lifestyle. This Perspective reviews the developments and requirements of wearable flexible electronic devices in medical monitoring and then discusses the possible applications and challenges of using flexible sensor technology for point-of-care devices. Finally, an up-to-date discussion of the flexible sensor, its future prospects, and solutions it could provide in medical and diagnostic equipment are summarized.

Skin bioelectronics towards long-term, continuous health monitoring

“…[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] The development of skin bioelectronics has shown their capabilities of high precision health monitoring and biodiagonise. 17,30 There are many reviews focused on skin or wearable electronics for health monitoring. Some summarize advanced materials or devices, 7,11,31 some put emphases on the…”

Hierarchical MXene@ZIF‐67 Film Based High Performance Tactile Sensor with Large Sensing Range from Motion Monitoring to Sound Wave Detection

“…Xiyao Fu, Lianjia Zhao, Zeyu Yuan, Yiqiang Zheng, Valerii Shulga, Wei Han,* and Lili Wang* DOI: 10.1002/admt.202101511 sensors in health monitoring, disease diagnosis, motion detection, and other aspects has attracted extensive attention. [1][2][3][4][5][6] Some new types of sensors, such as 3D touch sensors, and transparent stretchable/flexible electrophysiology sensors, have also been developed rapidly. [7,8] In recent years, a variety of wearable pressure sensors have been developed by using capacitive, piezoresistive, piezoelectric, and triboelectric sensing mechanisms, all of which have reliable wear performance, excellent realtime sensing performance, high flexibility, and good reproducibility.…”

Ultra-sensitive, stretchable, and bidirectional wearable strain sensor for human motion detection

“…[11][12][13] In addition, they also have unique application advantages in complex situations such as gesture recognition, 14 tactile perception, 15,16 visual control, 17 electronic nose 18 and point-of-care (POC) testing. [19][20][21] It is very important to develop a flexible strain sensor, which has higher sensitivity, faster response, lower detection limit and wider detection range. At present, there are three types of flexible strain sensors: piezoresistive, 22 piezoelectric, 2 and capacitive.…”