With the development of medical technology, real-time monitoring of personal physiological information and the personalized medicine it brings has attracted widespread attention. Electrochemical biosensors are devices that convert chemical signals into electrical signals. They can be used to monitor specific chemicals and are widely used in wearable medicine and other fields.
Existing implantable sensors are said to suffer from repeated mechanical damage between rigid devices and soft tissues due to the large modulus of the material itself. In addition, implantable devices designed based on two-dimensional planar structures are difficult to implant minimally invasively, making it difficult to form stable interfaces with tissues and preventing long-term accurate monitoring, which affects signal acquisition and biosafety.
A multidisciplinary team including Professor Huisheng Peng and Associate Professor Xuemei Sun from the Department of Polymer Science at Fudan University, Professor Hongbo Yu from the School of Life Sciences, and Professor Fan Xu from the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics designed a fiber electrochemical sensor with a multilevel helical structure by bionic muscle structure. Mechanical simulations and nanoindentation experiments demonstrated that carbon nanotube fibers have lower bending internal stresses than conventional implant materials (gold wires, polydimethylsiloxane, etc.) , and that their bending stiffness is closer to soft tissue than other conventional implant materials. At the same time, the team used an injection method applicable to the one-dimensional structure of the fibers to implant the fiber sensors precisely in the target area. The in vitro fibers are similar in shape to animal hairs attached to the surface of the skin.
Subsequent cellular experiments and tissue sections showed that the fiber sensor did not cause an inflammatory response or scarring in the animal after injection, and that it bonded well to the surrounding tissue. The fiber sensor has good biocompatibility and biointegration.
This work opens up a new direction in the field of bioelectronics. Through integrated circuits, Bluetooth and corresponding software, the fiber biosensor can remotely collect physiological data in real time, and the device can work stably in blood vessels for up to four weeks. So with the invention of the bionic fiber sensor, is it really possible to avoid hospitalization? The future can be expected!