posted on 2022-01-20, 20:03authored byShu Tian, Yihang Xing, You Long, Hongshuang Guo, Sijia Xu, Yiming Ma, Chiyu Wen, Qingsi Li, Xinmeng Liu, Lei Zhang, Jing Yang
Traditional
wearable devices are commonly nonrecyclable and nondegradable,
resulting in energy waste and environmental pollution. Here, a household
degradable and renewable ionic skin based on edible glutinous rice
gel is developed for a strain, temperature and salivary enzyme activity
sensor. This gel depends on intermolecular and intramolecular H-bonds
among amylopectin and amylose, and this presents excellent skin-like
properties, including stretchability, self-healing property, and adhesion
to various substrates. The glutinous rice gel-based skin sensor can
be used to monitor vital signs and physiological parameters such as
body temperature and heart rate. The sensor also achieves specific
speech recognition and detects temperature and body micromovements,
which provides the potential to reconstruct language or sensory/motor
functions. More importantly, because of the excellent biocompatibility
and degradability, the sensor can directly detect the activity of
human salivary amylase, which is useful for diagnosing pancreas-,
kidney-, and spleen-related diseases in the elderly. Finally, the
raw material of ionic skin that originates from traditional grains
is degradable and renewable as well as it can be used to prepare household
wearable devices. Hence, this work not only extends the application
of wearable electronics in daily life but also facilitates health
monitoring in the elderly and improves their quality of life.