Low-cost, μm-thick, tape-free electronic tattoo sensors with minimized motion and sweat artifacts
Open accessAbstract
Electronic tattoos (e-tattoos), also known as epidermal electronics, are ultra-thin and ultra-soft noninvasive but skin-conformable devices with capabilities including physiological sensing and transdermal stimulation and therapeutics. The fabrication of e-tattoos out of conventional inorganic electronic materials used to be tedious and expensive. Recently developed cut-and-paste method has significantly simplified the process and lowered the cost. However, existing cut-and-paste method entails a medical tape on which the electronic tattoo sensors should be pasted, which increases tattoo thickness and degrades its breathability. To address this problem, here we report a slightly modified cut-and-paste method to fabricate low-cost, open-mesh e-tattoos with a total thickness of just 1.5 μm. E-tattoos of such thinness can be directly pasted on human skin and conforms to natural skin texture. We demonstrate that this ultra-thin, tape-free e-tattoo can confidently measure electrocardiogram (ECG), skin temperature, and skin hydration. Heart rate and even respiratory rate can be extracted from the ECG signals. A special advantage of such ultra-thin e-tattoo is that it is capable of high-fidelity sensing with minimized motion artifacts under various body movements. Effects of perspiration are found to be insignificant due to the breathability of such e-tattoos.
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Various materials have been used as working electrodes, such as noble metals (Au and Ag), metallic oxides, graphene, and carbon black.
“Various materials have been used as working electrodes, such as noble metal (Au and Ag) (20–22), metallic oxides (23, 24), graphene (25, 26), and carbon black (27).”
From Integrated textile sensor patch for real-time and multiplex sweat analysis (2019) · cites this paper as [21]
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- Authors
- Wang, Y., Qiu, Y., Ameri, S. K., Jang, H., Dai, Z., Huang, Y., & Lu, N.
- Affiliations
- State Key Laboratory of Digital Manufacturing Equipment and Technology (CN)
- The University of Texas at Austin (US)
- Texas Materials Institute (US)
- Corresponding author
- Huang, YongAn
- Lu, Nanshu
- Venue
- npj Flexible Electronics
- Published
- 2018-02-13
- Volume
- 2
- Issue
- 1
- ISSN
- 2397-4621 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2804610938
- Cited by
- 192
- References
- 42
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 22 · 2024: 26 · 2023: 21 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 26 · 2019: 24 · 2018: 10
- FWCI
- 7.91
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- npj Flexible Electronics (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (51635007)
- Office of Naval Research (N00014‐16‐1‐2044, N00014)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Biomedical Engineering › Advanced Sensor and Energy Harvesting Materials
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Biomedical Engineering › Non-Invasive Vital Sign Monitoring
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Nanomaterials and Printing Technologies
- Keywords
- electronic tattoos, epidermal electronics, motion artifact reduction, electrocardiogram sensing, skin temperature sensing, heart rate monitoring, respiratory rate estimation, breathability
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