Integration of Heterogeneous Materials for Wearable Sensors

Wearable sensors are of interest for several application areas, most importantly for their potential to allow for the design of personal continuous health monitoring systems. For wearable sensors, flexibility is required and imperceptibility is desired. Wearable sensors must be robust to strain, motion, and environmental exposure. A number of different strategies have been utilized to achieve flexibility, imperceptibility, and robustness. All of these approaches require the integration of materials having a range of chemical, mechanical, and thermal properties. We have given a concise review of the range of materials that must be incorporated in wearable sensors regardless of the strategies adopted to achieve wearability. We first describe recent advances in the range of wearable sensing materials and their processing requirements and then discuss the potential routes to the integration of these heterogeneous materials.