New Wearable Sensor Sets Record for Solar Power Efficiency

Over the past five years, Wei Gao, assistant professor of medical engineering, Heritage Medical Research Institute Investigator, and Ronald and JoAnne Willens Scholar, has steadily added features to his sweat sensor wearables, making them capable of reading out levels of salts, sugars, uric acid, amino acids, and vitamins as well as more complex molecules like C-reactive protein that can provide timely assessment of certain health risks. Most recently, in collaboration with Martin Kaltenbrunner's group at Johannes Kepler University Linz in Austria, Gao has powered these wearable biosensors with a flexible solar cell. [Caltech story]