Cloth-based microfluidic devices integrated onto the patch as wearable colorimetric sensors for simultaneous sweat analysis

It was applied for sweat analysis during exercise, and the results show in agreement with the standard methods used in a clinical laboratory.

It was constructed on cotton cloth using wax printing technology (batik stamp) as cloth-based microfluidic devices (CMDs). Here, it uses micro volumes of samples to perform the reaction in the sensing zones, where the sensitive reagents are immobilized so that it can collect and analyze the sweat (lactic acid, sodium ions, and pH) as the model for sweat analytes. The colorimetric analysis was conducted via a smartphone camera by using a free app (Color Grab) for a color image analysis that uses for quantitative analysis or naked eye for semi-qualitative analysis.

The ∆RGB value of the CMDS shows the excellent linear correlation vs analytes concentration, where the coefficient of correlations was found for lactic acid (R2 = 0.994), sodium ion (R2 = 0.998), and pH (R2 = 0.994). The ∆RGB value shows the appropriate color value for the linear correlation of the analyte target concentrations in the sweat samples. Here, the limit of detection (LOD) was found at 45.73 µg/mL for lactic acid and 56.46 µg/mL for sodium ions. The reproducibility was found at 0.79% and 0.89%, for lactic acid and sodium ions respectively.