Project cofunded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Italy (MAECI) within the Executive Programme of Scientific and Technological Cooperation Project between Italy and Republic of Korea (2019-2021)

Scope of the project is to develop cost-effective wearable metal nanowire-based chips for optical monitoring of metabolites in sweat. This collaboration project proposes novel concepts of on-body sensing based on novel and advanced wearable materials for affordable monitoring of metabolites from sweat by developing cost-effective fabrication and patterning methods coupled with effective detection technologies.

This collaboration project is conducted for 3 years. In the first year, noble metal nanowire chips including silver and/or gold-coated silver metal nanowire networks on stretchable substrates with optimal mechanical
resistance and effective optical activity are developed. For this, an appropriate stretchable substrate is screened via reliability tests,
including mechanical and chemical reliability tests and is incorporated with metal nanowires. Optical properties of the metal nanowire-based
chips are tested together to evaluate the detecting ability. For the development of highly sensitive and cost-effective chips, a novel
patterning method using dry film photo-resist (DFR) is investigated and the biosensing ability of the patterned chips is explored together in the second year. During the 3rd year the metal nanowire-based chips are integrated in a miniaturized wearable system to be supported on skin with the purpose of on body optical monitoring of metabolites. The final system will serve to provide information on the health state on a personal basis and is willing to be adapted to specific diseases for tracking its evolution and for suggesting therapeutic strategies on demand at the point-of-care.