A Wearable Electrochemical Sensor Based on Anti-Fouling and Self-Healing Polypeptide Complex Hydrogels for Sweat Monitoring

Although continuous monitoring of constituents in complex sweat is crucial for noninvasive physiological evaluation, biofouling on the sweat sensor surface and inadequate flexible self-healing materials restrict its applications. Herein, a fully self-healing and strong anti-biofouling polypeptide complex hydrogel (AuNPs/MoS₂/Pep hydrogel) with excellent electrochemical performances was created. The anti-fouling electrochemical sweat sensor was fabricated based on the AuNPs/MoS₂/Pep hydrogel to address these issues. It was found that the polypeptide hydrogel was designed to form a network structure and carried abundant hydrophilic groups, resulting in a AuNPs/MoS₂/Pep hydrogel with superior anti-biofouling properties in sweat for 30 min and even long-term stability in undiluted human sweat. In addition, SEM, TEM, UV, XPS, and infrared spectrogram demonstrated that the binding force of π-π stacking force between MoS₂ and naphthalene groups in the designed peptide endowed the polypeptide complex hydrogel with an excellent self-healing property. Furthermore, the polypeptide complex hydrogel preserved wearable device function of continuously monitoring uric acid (UA) and ascorbic acid (AA) in sweat in situ. This novel fabricated sweat sensor with high anti-biofouling ability, excellent self-healing property, and sensitive and selective analytical capability describes a new opportunity for health monitoring in situ.