We construct and investigate paper-based microfluidic devices, which model long-term fluid harvesting, transport, sensing, and analysis in new wearables for sweat analysis. Such devices can continuously wick fluid mimicking sweat and dispose of it on evaporation pads. We characterize and analyze how the action of capillarity and evaporation can cooperatively be used to transport and process sweat mimics containing dissolved salts and model analytes. The results point out that non-invasive osmotic extraction combined with paper microfluidics and evaporative disposal can enable sweat collection and monitoring for durations longer than 10 days. We model the fluid flow in the new capillary–evaporative devices and identify the parameters enabling their long-term operation. We show that the transport rates are sufficiently large to handle natural sweat rates, while we envision that such handling can be interfaced with osmotic harvesting of sweat, a concept that we demonstrated recently. Finally, we illustrate that the salt film deposited at the evaporation pad would eventually lead to cessation of the process but at the same time will preserve a record of analytes that may be used for long-term biomarker monitoring in sweat. These principles can be implemented in future platforms for wearable skin-interfacing assays or electronic biomarker monitors.
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Principles of long-term fluids handling in paper-based wearables with capillary–evaporative transport
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Research Article|
June 09 2020
Principles of long-term fluids handling in paper-based wearables with capillary–evaporative transport
Timothy Shay;
Timothy Shay
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, North Carolina State University
, Raleigh, North Carolina 27695-7905, USA
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Tamoghna Saha
;
Tamoghna Saha
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, North Carolina State University
, Raleigh, North Carolina 27695-7905, USA
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Michael D. Dickey
;
Michael D. Dickey
a)
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, North Carolina State University
, Raleigh, North Carolina 27695-7905, USA
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Orlin D. Velev
Orlin D. Velev
a)
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, North Carolina State University
, Raleigh, North Carolina 27695-7905, USA
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Biomicrofluidics 14, 034112 (2020)
Article history
Received:
April 10 2020
Accepted:
May 11 2020
Citation
Timothy Shay, Tamoghna Saha, Michael D. Dickey, Orlin D. Velev; Principles of long-term fluids handling in paper-based wearables with capillary–evaporative transport. Biomicrofluidics 1 May 2020; 14 (3): 034112. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0010417
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