A Flexible and Wearable Human Stress Monitoring Patch

Sci Rep. 2016 Mar 23:6:23468. doi: 10.1038/srep23468.

Abstract

A human stress monitoring patch integrates three sensors of skin temperature, skin conductance, and pulsewave in the size of stamp (25 mm × 15 mm × 72 μm) in order to enhance wearing comfort with small skin contact area and high flexibility. The skin contact area is minimized through the invention of an integrated multi-layer structure and the associated microfabrication process; thus being reduced to 1/125 of that of the conventional single-layer multiple sensors. The patch flexibility is increased mainly by the development of flexible pulsewave sensor, made of a flexible piezoelectric membrane supported by a perforated polyimide membrane. In the human physiological range, the fabricated stress patch measures skin temperature with the sensitivity of 0.31 Ω/°C, skin conductance with the sensitivity of 0.28 μV/0.02 μS, and pulse wave with the response time of 70 msec. The skin-attachable stress patch, capable to detect multimodal bio-signals, shows potential for application to wearable emotion monitoring.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Equipment Design
  • Heart Rate
  • Humans
  • Monitoring, Ambulatory / instrumentation*
  • Monitoring, Ambulatory / methods
  • Remote Sensing Technology / instrumentation
  • Remote Sensing Technology / methods*
  • Skin Physiological Phenomena
  • Skin Temperature
  • Stress, Psychological / diagnosis*