Low power textile-based wearable sensor platform for pH and temperature monitoring with wireless battery recharge

Wearable sensing electronics is gradually coming to the foreground, due to the increasing awareness for health, environment and pollution matters. The inclusion of sensors into garments represents one of the most comfortable solutions for the wearer; this can be achieved by associating miniaturized electronics with smart fabrics. Basing our experience on previous studies on pH sensing, a novel smart fabric has been developed as a pH-meter: an organic and atoxic halochromic dye is sol-gel fixed on the textile for durability and reversibility purposes, and the readout is performed with a miniaturized novel sensing platform, including extremely low-power color and temperature sensors, wireless data transmission and a wireless battery recharge system. The potential applications vary from sweat pH monitoring for sport performances or medical research, to measurements of environmental conditions.