Wearable Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy

Wearable sensors have been developed to facilitate in situ chemical analysis of the wearer’s biofluids in a non-invasive manner. However, traditional wearable chemical sensors exhibit sensitivity exclusively to one chemical type within an analyte at a time. In contrast, wearable chemical sensors employing surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) provide a sophisticated means for the highly sensitive simultaneous measurement of multiple biomolecules in biofluids. The recent implementation of a highly scalable wearable SERS sensor was based on noble metal-coated mesh, specifically biocompatible polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) nanomesh. The usability of noble metal/PVA nanomesh was verified in terms of sensitivity, flexibility, stretchability, durability, reproducibility, uniformity, and wearability. Finally, the noble metal/PVA nanomesh, which is a sampling-free substrate, demonstrated its versatility and practicality in food safety testing and health monitoring.