Sustainable Solutions for Oral Health Monitoring: Biowaste-Derived Triboelectric Nanogenerator.

Oral healthcare monitoring is a vital aspect of identifying and addressing oral dental problems including tooth decay, gum pain, and oral cancer. Day by day, healthcare facilities and regular checkups are becoming more costly and time-consuming. In this context, consumers are moving toward advanced technology, such as bite sensors, to obtain regular data about their occlusal chewing patterns and strength. The triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) can potentially eliminate the need for a battery by simply converting abundant vibrations from nature or human motion into electrical energy. In this work, biomaterials are obtained from biowastes such as cellulose from wood waste, chitosan from crab shells, and gelatin from fish scales. All wastes are biodegradable, and our work aims at sustainability and waste hierarchy. The single electrode mode-based TENG was designed and fabricated using biodegradable poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA)-biomaterial composites, rice paper as a substrate, and edible silver leaf as an electrode. The highest electrical output was obtained for PVA/chitosan 10 wt % composite-based TENG (PC10) of about 20 V, 200 nA, and 12 nC. The biomechanical energy harvesting was measured, and powering of LED was demonstrated using a PC10 TENG device. A biocompatible bite sensor based on the TENG was used to measure the biting force of a dummy teeth model to demonstrate its potential use in dental health applications. It indicates the promising future value of disposable oral medication devices without any invasive surgery or injection.

Biopolymer-based electrospun fibers in electrochemical devices: versatile platform for energy, environment, and health monitoring.

Electrochemical power tools are regarded as essential keys in a world that is becoming increasingly reliant on fossil fuels in order to meet the challenges of rapidly depleting fossil fuel supplies. Additionally, due to the industrialization of societies and the growth of diseases, the need for sensitive, reliable, inexpensive, and portable sensors and biosensors for noninvasive monitoring of human health and environmental pollution is felt more than ever before. In recent decades, electrospun fibers have emerged as promising candidates for the fabrication of highly efficient electrochemical devices, such as actuators, batteries, fuel cells, supercapacitors, and biosensors. Meanwhile, the use of synthetic polymers in the fabrication of versatile electrochemical devices has raised environmental concerns, leading to an increase in the quest for natural polymers. Natural polymers are primarily derived from microorganisms and plants. Despite the challenges of processing bio-based electrospun fibers, employing natural nanofibers in the fabrication of electrochemical devices has garnered tremendous attention in recent years. Here, various natural polymers and the strategies employed to fabricate various electrospun biopolymers are briefly covered. The recent advances and research strategies used to apply the bio-based electrospun membranes in different electrochemical devices are carefully summarized, along with the scopes in various advanced technologies. A comprehensive and critical discussion about the use of biopolymer-based electrospun fibers as the potential alternative to non-renewable ones in future technologies is briefly highlighted. This review will serve as a field opening platform for using different biopolymer-based electrospun fibers to advance the electrochemical device-based renewable and sustainable technologies, which will be of high interest to a large community. Accordingly, future studies should focus on feasible and cost-effective extraction of biopolymers from natural resources as well as fabrication of high-performance nanofibrous biopolymer-based components applicable in various electrochemical devices.

Fabrication and response of alpha-hydroxybutyrate sensors for rapid assessment of cardiometabolic disease risk.

Early diagnosis and treatment can prevent or delay progression of early-stage type 2 diabetes and prediabetes. Unfortunately, tests such as hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c)/fasting plasma glucose (FPG) alone fail to diagnose or miscategorize up to 40% of individuals with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) or frank diabetes based on the rarely utilized oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT). The serum metabolite alpha-hydroxybutyrate (AHB) is increasingly recognized as a reliable IGT and diabetes predictor, and can be measured using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. However, to address AHB adoption as a population screening tool, the reliable and low-cost measurement techniques are proposed. A periodate based oxidation was performed for an AHB-based buffer, and both nitroprusside and Raman tests confirmed the formation of a slow-oxidation product. Electrochemical tests of AHB-based buffers using electrodes such as Au-honeycomb, thiol self-assembled monolayers coated Au, 2D material (black-P) coated FTO, (3-aminophenyl) triethoxysilane modified TiO2, were performed. Many of these electrodes exhibited a systematic response when AHB concentration was varied from ~1.0-12.0µg/ml. A colorimetric assay containing a vicinal-diol recognition moiety, additives, and a photoinitiator, exhibited a different color for AHB based buffer. Benesi-Hildebrand analysis indicated the association behavior of boronic acid and AHB. These methods have a potential to be used for rapid point-of-care measurements of AHB that could enhance population-wide diabetes and prediabetes screening strategies.