Self-powered electronic-skin for detecting glucose level in body fluid basing on piezo-enzymatic-reaction coupling process

Abstract The body electric (the integration of flexible biosensors and the human body) has attracted worldwide research attention because of its potential applications in the future health care. In this paper, a self-powered electronic-skin (e-skin) for detecting glucose level in body fluid has been realized basing on the piezo-enzymatic-reaction coupling process of GOx@ZnO (GOx: glucose-oxidase) nanowire arrays. The e-skin under applied deformation can actively output electric impulse through piezoelectric effect, and the outputting piezoelectric voltage can be significantly influenced by the glucose concentration in the solution. The piezoelectric output can be regarded as both the biosensing signal and the electricity power for driving the device. In this process, the e-skin does not need external electricity power source, and can long-lived work through harvesting the mechanical energy of human motion. The working mechanism has been proposed basing on the coupling of surface enzymatic reaction and piezoelectric effect. A practical application of the e-skin for detecting rabbit blood glucose concentration has been simply demonstrated. The present results could provoke a possible research field for the development of the body electric and widen the study scope for self-powered nano-devices/systems.