Highly Conformal Polymers for Ambulatory Electrophysiological Sensing

Stable ambulatory electrophysiological sensing is widely utilized for smart e-healthcare monitoring, clinical diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases, treatment of neurological diseases, and intelligent human-machine interaction. As the favorable signal interaction platform of electrophysiological sensing, the conformal property of on-skin electrodes is an extremely crucial factor that can affect the stability of long-term ambulatory electrophysiological sensing. From the perspective of materials, to realize conformal contact between electrodes and skin for stable sensing, highly conformal polymers are strongly demanding and attracting ever-growing attention. In this review, we focused on the recent progress of highly conformal polymers for ambulatory electrophysiological sensing, including their synthetic methods, conformal property, and potential applications. Specifically, three main types of highly conformal polymers for stable long-term electrophysiological signals monitoring were proposed, including nature silk fibroin based conformal polymers, marine mussels bio-inspired conformal polymers, and other conformal polymers such as zwitterionic polymers and polyacrylamide. Furthermore, the future challenges and opportunities of preparing highly conformal polymers for on-skin electrodes were also highlighted. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

A Protein-Based Free-Standing Proton-Conducting Transparent Elastomer for Large-Scale Sensing Applications

A most important endeavor in modern materials' research is the current shift toward green environmental and sustainable materials. Natural resources are one of the attractive building blocks for making environmentally friendly materials. In most cases, however, the performance of nature-derived materials is inferior to the performance of carefully designed synthetic materials. This is especially true for conductive polymers, which is the topic here. Inspired by the natural role of proteins in mediating protons, their utilization in the creation of a free-standing transparent polymer with a highly elastic nature and proton conductivity comparable to that of synthetic polymers, is demonstrated. Importantly, the polymerization process relies on natural protein crosslinkers and is spontaneous and energy-efficient. The protein used, bovine serum albumin, is one of the most affordable proteins, resulting in the ability to create large-scale materials at a low cost. Due to the inherent biodegradability and biocompatibility of the elastomer, it is promising for biomedical applications. Here, its immediate utilization as a solid-state interface for sensing of electrophysiological signals, is shown.