Glucowatch: A Novel Wearable Glucose Sensor Using Oxidative Reaction with Glucose Oxidase and Our Proposed Chemically Modified Biodegradable Origami-Inspired Paper Batteries

This paper introduces a novel way to monitor glucose concentration during exercise using origami paper batteries with oxidative reactions from glucose oxidase. Origami designs allow for increased flexibility, durability, and surface-area-to-volume ratio, suitable for wearable sensors and increasing battery contact. This paper also utilizes chemical enhancements on the paper substrate to increase voltage production by using acid and base. The acid used was acetic acid to increase porosity, furthermore, increasing surface-area-to-volume ratio and increasing the overall battery contact as well as sodium hypochlorite base to increase conductivity. With these enhancements, there was an approximate increase of 10% increase of voltage. This paper uses its own composition of anode ink, cathode ink, and current collector, where the overall electrolyte was increased by adding polyethylene glycol, allowing for increased electron flow and being biodegradable. By increasing voltage production, the wearable sensor will be more sensitive and accurate to the glucose concentration present in the sweat. Using the Miura-Ori design, the folding angle was decreased to fit into a 2 inch by 3 inch frame of a conventional band aid. Comparing the usage of origami and chemically enhanced paper battery, it produced at least 4 times more voltages than no origami and nonchemically enhanced paper battery. This indicates that with chemical enhancements as well as usage of origami the wearable sensor will be least 4 times more accurate. Data collected from authors was used to construct a graph showing correlation between the voltage production and glucose concentration, using a conventional glucose detector to compare the accuracy. The coefficient of determination was around 0.972 showing a direct relationship between glucose concentration and voltage production. This work is the first-ever reported to incorporate chemical enhancements and origami designs into a wearable glucose sensor during exercise.