The use of facemasks by the general population is recommended worldwide to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Despite the evidence in favour of facemasks to reduce community transmission, there is also agreement on the potential adverse effects of their prolonged usage, mainly caused by CO₂ rebreathing. Herein we report the development of a sensing platform for gaseous CO₂ real-time determination inside FFP2 facemasks. The system consists of an opto-chemical sensor combined with a flexible, battery-less, near-field-enabled tag with resolution and limit of detection of 103 and 140 ppm respectively, and sensor lifetime of 8 h, which is comparable with recommended FFP2 facemask usage times. We include a custom smartphone application for wireless powering, data processing, alert management, results displaying and sharing. Through performance tests during daily activity and exercise monitoring, we demonstrate its utility for non-invasive, wearable health assessment and its potential applicability for preclinical research and diagnostics.

This work presents the design, fabrication, and characterization of a printed radio frequency identification tag in the ultra-high frequency band with multiple sensing capabilities. This passive tag is directly screen printed on a cardboard box with the aim of monitoring the packaging conditions during the different stages of the supply chain. This tag includes a commercial force sensor and a printed opening detector. Hence, the force applied to the package can be measured as well as the opening of the box can be detected. The architecture presented is a passive single-chip RFID tag. An electronic switch has been implemented to be able to measure both sensor magnitudes in the same access without including a microcontroller or battery. Moreover, the chip used here integrates a temperature sensor and, therefore, this tag provides three different parameters in every reading.