Organic electrochemical transistor-based channel dimension-independent single-strand wearable sweat sensors

Despite the great potential of polymer microfibers in human-friendly wearable electronics, most previous polymeric electronics have been limited to thin-film-based devices due to practical difficulties in fabricating microfibrillar devices, as well as defining the active channel dimensions in a repr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inNPG Asia materials Vol. 10; no. 11; pp. 1086 - 1095
Main Authors Kim, Youngseok, Lim, Taekyung, Kim, Chi-Hyeong, Yeo, Chang Su, Seo, Keumyoung, Kim, Seong-Min, Kim, Jiwoong, Park, Sang Yoon, Ju, Sanghyun, Yoon, Myung-Han
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Tokyo Nature Publishing Group 01.11.2018
Subjects
Conducting polymers
Electrochemical analysis
Electronics
Ion concentration
Ions
Microfibers
Polystyrene resins
Semiconductor devices
Sensors
Substrates
Sulfuric acid
Sweat
Thin films
Transistors
Wearable technology
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Summary:Despite the great potential of polymer microfibers in human-friendly wearable electronics, most previous polymeric electronics have been limited to thin-film-based devices due to practical difficulties in fabricating microfibrillar devices, as well as defining the active channel dimensions in a reproducible manner. Herein, we report on conducting polymer microfiber-based organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) and their application in single-strand fiber-type wearable ion concentration sensors. We developed a simple wet-spinning process to form very conductive poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) microfibers using aqueous sulfuric acid solutions and carefully examined their electrical/electrochemical properties. In conjunction with fabricating substrate-free PEDOT:PSS microfiber-based OECT devices, the proposed novel characterization method demonstrated that the current variation ratio can be a reliable method for evaluating the device performance for sensing ion concentrations, regardless of the actual channel dimensions. Finally, we developed single-strand fiber-type skin-mountable OECTs by introducing a source-gate hybrid electrode and demonstrated that the resultant microfiber sensors can perform real-time repetitive measurements of the ion concentration in human sweat.
ISSN:1884-4049
1884-4057
DOI:10.1038/s41427-018-0097-3