Cascaded enzymatic reaction-mediated multicolor pixelated quantitative system integrated microfluidic wearable analytical device (McPiQ-μWAD) for non-invasive and sensitive glucose diagnostics

Abstract

Non-invasive body fluid analysis has been increasingly developed for health monitoring and disease diagnostics. However, some portable devices, as one representative non-invasive application, must require complicated multi-step reactions, expensive photoelectric components, and be difficult for large-scale fabrication. Herein, we have integrated a cascaded enzymatic reaction-mediated multicolor pixelated quantitative system on the wearable microfluidic device (McPiQ-μWAD) for non-invasive and sensitive detection of sweat glucose. This is the first application of non-invasive portable detection using multicolor pixelated quantification, and it’s also the first smartphone-assistant multicolor pixelated analysis for Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance (LSPR) of gold nanorods (Au NRs). The wearable device incorporated laser-ablated microfluidic technology and enzyme-mediated Au NRs etching system for the achievement of rapid and sensitive pixelated quantification. The McPiQ-μWAD successfully transferred sweat glucose into a visual colorful signal in the concentration range of 0.02–2.4 mM (0.36–43.2 mg/dL) by pixelated quantification with the limit of detection (LOD) of 0.02 mM (0.36 mg/dL). Compared with commercial glucose kit-based spectrometry, the detection results of real sweat samples from healthy volunteers showed desirable reliability and accuracy based on the McPiQ-μWAD. The presented McPiQ-μWAD provides the high potential to be broadly utilized for non-invasive analyses for applications in family health surveillance and point-of-care tests of emergency.