Recent advances and perspectives in sweat based wearable electrochemical sensors

The majority of existing medical diagnosis depends on the blood analysis in centralized sophisticated laboratories having bulky, complex, and time-consuming clinical instruments. Blood test involves invasive sample collection followed by plasma separation via centrifugation, and chemical analyses. This may prevent persons in need of urgent medical diagnosis and prompt medical attention. Wearable biosensor offers non-invasive monitoring of physiologically relevant biomarkers from biofluids and continuous tracking of real-time health status. Recent advances are much focused on electrochemical monitoring of various biomarkers from sweat samples. Such skin-interfaced sweat sensors require flexibility, stretchability and self-healing ability to match with the mechanical properties of the epidermis. The multiplexed sweat analysis coupled with wireless signal transduction provides vital information about health and fitness level of the wearer. This review focuses on the challenges, perspectives, recent advances and the technological aspects in the progress of wearable electrochemical sweat sensors. •Wearable sweat sensors offer non-invasive monitoring of real-time health information.•Wearable sensors require skin-like flexibility, stretchability and self-healing ability.•Microfluidic integration facilitates real-time sample transport and eliminates dilution.•Multiplexed sweat analysis enables timely diagnosis and prompt clinical therapy.