Bioengineering study demonstrates real-time exhaled carbon dioxide tracking using a smart wireless facemask, highlighting viable noninvasive respiratory disease diagnosis.
Exhaled CO2 monitoring offers critical insights into respiratory, cardiac, and metabolic functions. However, its broader adoption is hindered by the lack of compact, fast-responding, and humidity-resistant sensing systems capable of accurately tracking rapid breathing cycles in real time. Here, we present a fully integrated wireless facemask for continuous exhaled CO2 monitoring that overcomes these challenges. We developed a nanocomposite colorimetric sensing material, mCP/ZIF-8-NH2@fCOF, which possesses an ultrafast response time of 60 ms and a hydrophobic shell that mitigates humidity interference. By coupling its optical response with a convolutional neural network, the facemask can identify various breathing patterns with 94% accuracy and diagnose chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with 93% accuracy. Furthermore, the facemask has proven effective for exercise monitoring and sleep apnea detection. This nonintrusive, highly compact, and versatile device provides a practical pathway toward ubiquitous respiratory monitoring and personalized health management.
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Zheng et al. (2026) studied this question.
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