Advances in Respiratory Monitoring: A Comprehensive Review of Wearable and Remote Technologies.

This article explores the importance of wearable and remote technologies in healthcare. The focus highlights its potential in continuous monitoring, examines the specificity of the issue, and offers a view of proactive healthcare. Our research describes a wide range of device types and scientific methodologies, starting from traditional chest belts to their modern alternatives and cutting-edge bioamplifiers that distinguish breathing from chest impedance variations. We also investigated innovative technologies such as the monitoring of thorax micromovements based on the principles of seismocardiography, ballistocardiography, remote camera recordings, deployment of integrated optical fibers, or extraction of respiration from cardiovascular variables. Our review is extended to include acoustic methods and breath and blood gas analysis, providing a comprehensive overview of different approaches to respiratory monitoring. The topic of monitoring respiration with wearable and remote electronics is currently the center of attention of researchers, which is also reflected by the growing number of publications. In our manuscript, we offer an overview of the most interesting ones.

Research and Development of a COVID-19 Tracking System in Order to Implement Analytical Tools to Reduce the Infection Risk.

The whole world is currently focused on COVID-19, which causes considerable economic and social damage. The disease is spreading rapidly through the population, and the effort to stop the spread is entirely still failing. In our article, we want to contribute to the improvement of the situation. We propose a tracking system that would identify affected people with greater accuracy than medical staff can. The main goal was to design hardware and construct a device that would track anonymous risky contacts in areas with a highly concentrated population, such as schools, hospitals, large social events, and companies. We have chosen a 2.4 GHz proprietary protocol for contact monitoring and mutual communication of individual devices. The 2.4 GHz proprietary protocol has many advantages such as a low price and higher resistance to interference and thus offers benefits. We conducted a pilot experiment to catch bugs in the system. The device is in the form of a bracelet and captures signals from other bracelets worn at a particular location. In case of contact with an infected person, the alarm is activated. This article describes the concept of the tracking system, the design of the devices, initial tests, and plans for future use.

Photoresponse Dimensionality of Organic Field-Effect Transistor.

Organic field-effect transistors have been envisioned for advanced photodetectors because the organic semiconductors provide unique absorption characteristics, low-cost fabrication, or compatibility with flexible substrates. However, the response time of organic phototransistors still does not reach the required application level. Here, we report the photoresponse of copper phthalocyanine phototransistor in a steady state and under pulsed illumination. The detailed analysis based on the random walk among a field of traps was used to evaluate the dimensionality of electron transport in a device.

Synthesis and Effect of the Structure of Bithienyl-Terminated Surfactants for Dielectric Layer Modification in Organic Transistor.

A series of bithienyl-terminated surfactants with various alkyl chain lengths (from C8 to C13) and phosphono or chlorodimethylsilyl anchoring groups were synthesized by palladium-catalyzed hydrophosphonation, or platinum-catalyzed hydrosilylation as a key step. Surfactants were tested in pentacene or α-sexithiophene-based organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) for the modification of the dielectric surface. The studied surfactants increased the effective mobility of the α-sexithiophene-based device by up to one order of magnitude. The length of alkyl chain showed to be significant for the pentacene-based device, as the effective mobility only increased in the case of dielectric modification with bithienylundecylphosphonic acid. AFM allowed a better understanding of the morphology of semiconductors on bare SiO2 and surfaces treated with bithienylundecylphosphonic acid.

Charge injection and transport properties of an organic light-emitting diode.

The charge behavior of organic light emitting diode (OLED) is investigated by steady-state current-voltage technique and impedance spectroscopy at various temperatures to obtain activation energies of charge injection and transport processes. Good agreement of activation energies obtained by steady-state and frequency-domain was used to analyze their contributions to the charge injection and transport. We concluded that charge is injected into the OLED device mostly through the interfacial states at low voltage region, whereas the thermionic injection dominates in the high voltage region. This comparison of experimental techniques demonstrates their capabilities of identification of major bottleneck of charge injection and transport.