Smart bioelectronic facemask for non-invasive detection of respiratory infections

With the escalating global burden of respiratory infections and their recurrent outbreaks, the development of simple, accurate, and non-invasive point-of-care diagnostic technologies has become an urgent public health priority. In this study, we present a smart bioelectronic facemask designed for noninvasive detection of respiratory pathogens, which facilitates collection of exhaled aerosols and enables rapid, highly sensitive, and accurate detection of SARS-CoV-2. This platform incorporates flexible microfluidic chip and a miniaturized circuit boards into conventional face masks without compromising user comfort. The microfluidic chip integrates a porous polycarbonate (PC) membrane for continuous aerosol sampling, and a recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA)-coupled electrochemical biosensor for specific viral detection. This wearable platform seamlessly integrates the entire workflow of exhaled aerosol collection, lysis, nucleic acid amplification, and real-time detection, which enables the completion of analysis within 30 min and achieves a detection limit as low as 0.19 copy/μL. Validation using simulated exhaled breath samples demonstrated 96.7 % accuracy, 95.0 % sensitivity, and 100 % specificity compared to RT-qPCR. By combining non-invasive sampling and wearable molecular diagnostics, this smart bioelectronic facemask constitutes a viable platform for point-of-care pathogen detection, offering a timely and practical solution for use in high-risk and resource-limited settings.