Wearable Acetone Monitoring

Most research aimed at measuring biomarkers on the skin is only concerned with sensing chemicals in sweat, but these methods are not truly noninvasive because they require substantial and often inconvenient amounts of sweat to get a reading. This project aims to create a truly non-invasive wearable sensor that continuously detects the gaseous acetone (a biomarker related to metabolic disorders) that ambiently comes out of the skin. Composite films of the intrinsically conducting polymer polyaniline and cellulose acetate, previously shown to exhibit a mechano-chemical actuation response to gaseous acetone, were tested for electrical response to low concentrations of gaseous acetone and possible interferents in dry, breathing quality air at room temperature.