“Babies don’t cry anymore!” Developing a “smart diaper” that sends an alert to your phone when you need to change it!

Scientists have created “smart diapers” with a built-in sensor that can send an alert to your phone when it gets wet.

The small device is made from paper pre-treated with sodium chloride, commonly known as salt, and has a circuit board.

The circuit board is traced, the graphite is transferred to the surface, and then a small lithium battery is attached to the device.
And when the paper gets wet—for example, when a baby needs a diaper change—the graphite reacts with the liquid and the sodium chloride.

When the paper absorbs water molecules, electrons begin to flow into the graphite and trigger a sensor, which then sends a message to the phone.

The technology can also indicate how wet a diaper is, letting parents know if it needs to be changed urgently.

A team at Pennsylvania State University combined four sensors between the absorbent layers of a diaper to create “smart diapers” that can detect moisture.

“Actually, this app is based on personal experience. There is no easy way to know how wet we are, and this information can be very helpful for parents,” said study lead author Dr Huanyu Zhang, a father of two young children.

The sensor can provide data in the short term to alert when a diaper is changed, as well as in the long term to show patterns that can inform parents about their baby’s overall health.

The researchers said the sensors could also be used in hospitals and nursing homes, or even to predict serious health problems such as cardiac arrest and pneumonia.

They tested their device on a face mask and found that it was able to classify three different breathing states – deep, regular and fast.

They said the data could be used to detect the onset of a heart attack or respiratory arrest.

It also works as part of a proximity switch that can detect changes in air humidity by the presence of a finger without touching the sensor with a finger.

“The atoms on the finger don’t need to touch the button, they just need to be near the surface to disperse the water molecules and turn on the sensor,” said Dr. Chang.

And when you think about what we’ve learned from the pandemic about the need to limit body contact with shared surfaces, such a sensor could be an important tool to prevent potential infection.

The sensor and phone app are still in development, but the researchers hope it will become public at some point in the future.

The results are published in the journal Nano Letters.

Source: Daily Mail