This review describes recent advances in biosensors for non-invasive human healthcare applications, especially focusing on sweat analysis, along with approaches for fabricating these biosensors based on printed electronics technology. Human sweat contains various kinds of biomarkers. The relationship between a trace amount of sweat biomarkers partially partitioned from blood and diseases has been investigated by omic analysis. Recent progress in wearable or portable biosensors has enabled periodic or continuous monitoring of some sweat biomarkers while supporting the results of the omic analysis. In this review, we particularly focused on a transistor-based biosensor that is highly sensitive in quantitatively detecting the low level of sweat biomarkers. Furthermore, we showed a new approach of flexible hybrid electronics that has been applied to advanced sweat biosensors to realize fully integrated biosensing systems wirelessly connected to a networked IoT system. These technologies are based on uniquely advanced printing techniques that will facilitate mass fabrication of high-performance biosensors at low cost for future smart healthcare.
Keywords: Sweat analysis; flexible hybrid electronics; organic transistor-based biosensor; printed electronics.