Highly Stretchable Wearable Electrochemical Sensor Based on Ni-Co MOF Nanosheet-Decorated Ag/rGO/PU Fiber for Continuous Sweat Glucose Detection

Abstract

A noninvasive fiber material-based wearable electrochemical sensor to continuously monitor the glucose level in sweat is highly desirable for smart fabrics for personal diabetes management. To achieve it, the key challenge is to construct fibers with high stretchability and excellent electrochemical performance. Herein, a highly stretchable Ni-Co metal-organic framework/Ag/reduced graphene oxide/polyurethane (Ni-Co MOF/Ag/rGO/PU) fiber-based wearable electrochemical sensor is fabricated for monitoring the glucose level in sweat continuously with high sensitivity and accuracy. The rGO/PU fiber was simply produced by an improved wet spinning technology, and the Ni-Co MOF nanosheet was coated on its surface to prepare the Ni-Co MOF/Ag/rGO/PU (NCGP) fiber electrode. The Ni-Co MOF has a large specific surface area and high catalytic activity, which enables the fiber sensors with good electrochemical performance with a high sensitivity of 425.9 μA·mM-1·cm-2 and a wide linear range of 10 μM-0.66 mM. More importantly, the NCGP fiber electrode also shows extremely high stretching and bending stability under mechanical deformation. Also, the NCGP fiber electrode has high selectivity and long-time storage stability. Moreover, the NCGP fiber-based three-electrode system was sewn with an absorbent fabric and fixed on a stretchable polydimethylsiloxane film substrate to form a nonenzymatic sweat glucose wearable sensor, which realized real-time monitoring of glucose in human sweat with high accuracy. This indicates that our designed NCGP fiber can be used as a wearable electrochemical sensor for the bio-diagnostics of body sweat.