Our team has established a strong and coherent program on wearable sensors by integrating surface engineering, plasmonic nanomaterials, wettability control, and soft-material manufacturing. This work spans smart contact lenses and skin-mounted wearable patches aimed at non-invasive healthcare monitoring and therapy. Early studies demonstrated self-moisturizing contact lenses that exploit capillary-driven fluid transport to maintain sustained hydration, providing a foundation for functional ocular wearables (Additive Manufacturing, 2022). Fundamental investigations into oil-grafted and track-engineered surfaces revealed controlled directional transport of droplets and bubbles, offering critical design principles for fluid handling in wearable and microfluidic systems (Langmuir, 2023). Building on this, surface-engineered PDMS contact lenses were developed for direct interaction with tear fluid, enabling tear-biomolecule sensing in a truly wearable format (Lab on a Chip, 2024). The research further advanced into plasmonic wearable technologies, including in situ gold nanoparticle–integrated PDMS contact lenses that enable optical modulation for color blindness management (RSC Advances, 2025) and hydrogel-embedded PDMS contact lenses designed for sustained ocular drug delivery (ACS Applied Bio Materials, 2024). Extending wearable sensing beyond the eye, the group also reported a plasmonic adhesive patch for SERS-based sweat sensing, enabling highly sensitive, non-invasive chemical analysis using skin-conformal substrates (RSC Advances, 2025). Complementary efforts in surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) for point-of-care bioanalysis further strengthen the translational potential of these wearable platforms. Collectively, these works position smart contact lenses and plasmonic patches as multifunctional wearable sensor and therapeutic systems, capable of tear- and sweat-based biochemical sensing, optical functionality, and controlled drug delivery for next-generation healthcare applications.

References

1. Aravind M., Chidangil S., George S. D., Additive Manufacturing, 55 (2022), 102842.

2. Aravind M., Peethan A., George S. D., Langmuir, 39 (2023), 1987–1996.

3. Aravind M., George S. D., Lab on a Chip, 24 (2024), 2327–2334.

4. Puravankara V., Morayi A., Hanosh S., George S. D., RSC Advances, 15 (2025), 12152–12161.

5. Aravind M., Butt H., George S. D., RSC Advances, 15 (2025), 12765–12772. https://doi.org/10.1039/D4RA08879D

6. Aravind M., George S. D., ACS Applied Bio Materials, 7 (2024), 7324–7331. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsabm.4c00975