A wearable Raman sensor for monitoring metabolic secretions in sweat

Wearable sweat biosensors capable of non-invasive detection, real-time monitoring and wireless analysis of biomarkers in sweat is an emerging technology for digital healthcare and personalized medicine. However, conventional wearable sensors can detect only 1 type of molecule, e.g. glucose, in sweat, which cannot provide a wholistic view of the dynamic changes of other sweat molecules. Raman spectroscopic sensors can exhibit intrinsic narrow Raman peaks of metabolite molecules and thus allow multiplexed detection of molecules mixture. But the Raman signals of sweat molecules (in the range of mmol/L) are usually too weak to be detected by a portable Raman spectrometer. This project will use the PI’s nanopillar surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) biosensors (DOI: 10.1021/nl401920u, DOI: 10.1039/C4TA07076C , DOI: 10.1039/C4TA00904E) for Raman signals enhancement and apply the machine learning analysis to detect various metabolite molecules and monitoring of physiological conditions in sport and exercise science.