Thanks to rapid technological innovation over the last decade, a wide range of wearable devices have emerged, playing an inspiring role in healthcare, diagnostics, and sports monitoring. This review summarizes recent progress in the development and application of electrochemical (EC) sweat sensors and self-powered systems for wearable applications. Presented here are the most common types of EC sweat sensors, namely potentiometric ion-selective electrodes, amperometric enzymatic and non-enzymatic sensors, as well as differential pulse voltammetric sensors. The sensing principle and novel functional nanomaterials that are used to enhance the performance of wearable sweat sensors and their applications are summarized. The recent advancement of battery-free wearable devices is presented, including self-powered biofuel cells (BFC), energy harvesting from novel materials and its strategy, are also discussed. The challenges in, and opportunities for, the development of sweat sensor-based wearable systems moving forward are reviewed, with the aim of shedding some light on future directions.

Large-area growth of monolayer films of the transition metal dichalcogenides is of the utmost importance in this rapidly advancing research area. The mechanical exfoliation method offers high quality monolayer material but it is a problematic approach when applied to materials that are not air stable. One important example is 1T’-WTe ₂ , which in multilayer form is reported to possess a large non saturating magnetoresistance, pressure induced superconductivity, and a weak antilocalization effect, but electrical data for the monolayer is yet to be reported due to its rapid degradation in air. Here we report a reliable and reproducible large-area growth process for obtaining many monolayer 1T’-WTe ₂ flakes. We confirmed the composition and structure of monolayer 1T’-WTe ₂ flakes using x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy, Raman spectroscopy and aberration corrected transmission electron microscopy. We studied the time dependent degradation of monolayer 1T’-WTe ₂ under ambient conditions, and we used first-principles calculations to identify reaction with oxygen as the degradation mechanism. Finally we investigated the electrical properties of monolayer 1T’-WTe ₂ and found metallic conduction at low temperature along with a weak antilocalization effect that is evidence for strong spin–orbit coupling.

All-electronic DNA biosensors based on graphene field-effect transistors (GFETs) offer the prospect of simple and cost-effective diagnostics. For GFET sensors based on complementary probe DNA, the sensitivity is limited by the binding affinity of the target oligonucleotide, in the nM range for 20 mer targets. We report a ∼20 000× improvement in sensitivity through the use of engineered hairpin probe DNA that allows for target recycling and hybridization chain reaction. This enables detection of 21 mer target DNA at sub-fM concentration and provides superior specificity against single-base mismatched oligomers. The work is based on a scalable fabrication process for biosensor arrays that is suitable for multiplexed detection. This approach overcomes the binding-affinity-dependent sensitivity of nucleic acid biosensors and offers a pathway toward multiplexed and label-free nucleic acid testing with high accuracy and selectivity.