Flexible and stretchable physical sensors capable of both energy harvesting and self‐powered sensing are vital to the rapid advancements in wearable electronics. Even so, there exist few studies that ...can integrate energy harvesting and self‐powered sensing into a single electronic skin. Here, a stretchable and washable skin‐inspired triboelectric nanogenerator (SI‐TENG) is developed for both biomechanical energy harvesting and versatile pressure sensing. A planar and designable conductive yarn network constructed from a three‐ply‐twisted silver‐coated nylon yarn is embedded into flexible elastomer, endowing the SI‐TENG with desired stretchability, good sensitivity, high detection precision, fast responsivity, and excellent mechanical stability. With a maximum average power density of 230 mW m−2, the SI‐TENG is able to light up 170 light‐emitting diodes, charge various capacitors, and drive miniature electronic products. As a self‐powered multifunctional sensor, the SI‐TENG is adopted to monitor human physiological signals, such as arterial pulse and voice vibrations. Furthermore, an intelligent prosthetic hand, a self‐powered pedometer/speedometer, a flexible digital keyboard, and a proof‐of‐concept pressure‐sensor array with 8 × 8 sensing pixels are successively demonstrated to further confirm its versatile application prospects. Based on these merits, the developed SI‐TENG has promising applications in wearable powering technology, physiological monitoring, intelligent prostheses, and human–machine interfaces.
A flexible, stretchable, washable, and multifunctional triboelectric‐based electronic skin obtained by embedding a planar and designable yarn electrode network into transparent elastomer is presented for both biomechanical energy harvesting and self‐powered pressure sensing. An energy harvester, physiological monitor, prosthetic hand, real‐time pedometer/speedometer, flexible digital keyboard, and tactile sensing array are successively demonstrated in order to confirm its versatile application prospects.
Robots that can move, feel, and respond like organisms will bring revolutionary impact to today's technologies. Soft robots with organism‐like adaptive bodies have shown great potential in vast ...robot–human and robot–environment applications. Developing skin‐like sensory devices allows them to naturally sense and interact with environment. Also, it would be better if the capabilities to feel can be active, like real skin. However, challenges in the complicated structures, incompatible moduli, poor stretchability and sensitivity, large driving voltage, and power dissipation hinder applicability of conventional technologies. Here, various actively perceivable and responsive soft robots are enabled by self‐powered active triboelectric robotic skins (tribo‐skins) that simultaneously possess excellent stretchability and excellent sensitivity in the low‐pressure regime. The tribo‐skins can actively sense proximity, contact, and pressure to external stimuli via self‐generating electricity. The driving energy comes from a natural triboelectrification effect involving the cooperation of contact electrification and electrostatic induction. The perfect integration of the tribo‐skins and soft actuators enables soft robots to perform various actively sensing and interactive tasks including actively perceiving their muscle motions, working states, textile's dampness, and even subtle human physiological signals. Moreover, the self‐generating signals can drive optoelectronic devices for visual communication and be processed for diverse sophisticated uses.
Actively perceiving and responsive soft robots that can use the triboelectric effect and self‐generating electricity to sense and respond to stimuli are demonstrated. They are enabled by self‐powered and highly stretchable triboelectric proximity‐ and pressure‐sensing skins. After homogeneous integration, these soft robots can actively perceive their body‐motions, working states, environment stimuli, baby diaper conditions, and even human pulses by self‐generating electricity.
Hierarchical Co3O4 nanorods have been synthesized by a hydrothermal method which shows potential application as sensing material for gas sensor.
Hierarchical Co3O4 nanorods are prepared by effective ...hydrothermal strategy. The morphology and structure of the hierarchical nanostructures are characterized by means of field emission scanning electron microscope, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction. The as-prepared Co3O4 nanorods with the diameters about 200nm are composed of small nanorods with average sizes of 20nm. The gas-sensing properties of synthesized nanorods are tested to ammonia. Results reveal that hierarchical Co3O4 nanorods have excellent sensing performance. Moreover, the sensor consisting of hierarchical Co3O4 nanorods exhibits high response and fast response/recovery speed to ammonia gas, while the sensor made of normal Co3O4 nanorods do not exhibit notable response to ammonia gas. Significant enhancement of the sensing performance is attributed to the unique hierarchical nanostructure and good catalytic activity of Co3O4 nanomaterials.
Electric eel‐skin‐inspired mechanically durable and super‐stretchable nanogenerator is demonstrated for the first time by using triboelectric effect. This newly designed nanogenerator can produce ...electricity by touch or tapping despite under various extreme mechanical deformations or even after experiencing damage. This device can be used not only as deformable and wearable power source but also as fully autonomous and self‐sufficient adaptive electronic skin system.
Triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) has been considered to be a more effective technology to harvest various types of mechanic vibration energies such as wind energy, water energy in the blue energy, ...and so on. Considering the vast energy from the blue oceans, harvesting of the water energy has attracted huge attention. There are two major types of “mechanical” water energy, water wave energy in random direction and water flow kinetic energy. However, although the most reported TENG can be used to efficiently harvest one type of water energy, to simultaneously collect two or more types of such energy still remains challenging. In this work, two different freestanding, multifunctional TENGs are successfully developed that can be used to harvest three types of energies including water waves, air flowing, and water flowing. These two new TENGs designed in accordance with the same freestanding model yield the output voltages of 490 and ≈100 V with short circuit currents of 24 and 2.7 µA, respectively, when operated at a rotation frequency of 200 rpm and the movement frequency of 3 Hz. Moreover, the developed multifunctional TENG can also be explored as a self‐powered speed sensor of wind by correlating the short‐circuit current with the wind speed.
To simultaneously collect two or more types of water energy still remains challenging for the freestanding model of triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG). In this work, multifunctional TENG is developed that not only can successfully be used to simultaneously harvest water waves, air flowing, and water flowing based on the freestanding model, but also can be explored as a self‐powered speed sensor of wind.
Functional polymers possess outstanding uniqueness in fabricating intelligent devices such as sensors and actuators, but they are rarely used for converting mechanical energy into electric power. ...Here, a vitrimer based triboelectric nanogenerator (VTENG) is developed by embedding a layer of silver nanowire percolation network in a dynamic disulfide bond‐based vitrimer elastomer. In virtue of covalent dynamic disulfide bonds in the elastomer matrix, a thermal stimulus enables in situ healing if broken, on demand reconfiguration of shape, and assembly of more sophisticated structures of VTENG devices. On rupture or external damage, the structural integrity and conductivity of VTENG are restored under rapid thermal stimulus. The flexible and stretchable VTENG can be scaled up akin to jigsaw puzzles and transformed from 2D to 3D structures. It is demonstrated that this self‐healable and shape‐adaptive VTENG can be utilized for mechanical energy harvesters and self‐powered tactile/pressure sensors with extended lifetime and excellent design flexibility. These results show that the incorporation of organic materials into electronic devices can not only bestow functional properties but also provide new routes for flexible device fabrication.
A flexible and self‐healable triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is achieved by combining a vitrimer elastomer and a silver‐nanowire network. By introducing terrace structure, scaling up TENGs can be as easy as playing jigsaw puzzles, which also provides a new fabrication route for flexible devices. The output performance also increases correspondingly when the number of assembly pieces is increased.
Growing demand in portable electronics raises a requirement to electronic devices being stretchable, deformable, and durable, for which functional polymers are ideal choices of materials. Here, the ...first transformable smart energy harvester and self‐powered mechanosensation sensor using shape memory polymers is demonstrated. The device is based on the mechanism of a flexible triboelectric nanogenerator using the thermally triggered shape transformation of organic materials for effectively harvesting mechanical energy. This work paves a new direction for functional polymers, especially in the field of mechanosensation for potential applications in areas such as soft robotics, biomedical devices, and wearable electronics.
A shape‐memory‐polymer‐based triboelectric nanogenerator (STENG) is developed to harvest biomechanical energy and detect biomechanical motion. The STENG is able to transform its shape according to different requirements and hold on to a temporary configuration, which can act as an energy harvester as well as a self‐powered, wearable, biomechanical sensor.
Abstract
Triggered by the pioneering research on graphene, the family of two-dimensional layered materials (2DLMs) has been investigated for more than a decade, and appealing functionalities have ...been demonstrated. However, there are still challenges inhibiting high-quality growth and circuit-level integration, and results from previous studies are still far from complying with industrial standards. Here, we overcome these challenges by utilizing machine-learning (ML) algorithms to evaluate key process parameters that impact the electrical characteristics of MoS
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top-gated field-effect transistors (FETs). The wafer-scale fabrication processes are then guided by ML combined with grid searching to co-optimize device performance, including mobility, threshold voltage and subthreshold swing. A 62-level SPICE modeling was implemented for MoS
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FETs and further used to construct functional digital, analog, and photodetection circuits. Finally, we present wafer-scale test FET arrays and a 4-bit full adder employing industry-standard design flows and processes. Taken together, these results experimentally validate the application potential of ML-assisted fabrication optimization for beyond-silicon electronic materials.
Wearable electronics fabricated on lightweight and flexible substrate are believed to have great potential for portable devices, but their applications are limited by the life span of their ...batteries. We propose a hybridized self-charging power textile system with the aim of simultaneously collecting outdoor sunshine and random body motion energies and then storing them in an energy storage unit. Both of the harvested energies can be easily converted into electricity by using fiber-shaped dye-sensitized solar cells (for solar energy) and fiber-shaped triboelectric nanogenerators (for random body motion energy) and then further stored as chemical energy in fiber-shaped supercapacitors. Because of the all-fiber-shaped structure of the entire system, our proposed hybridized self-charging textile system can be easily woven into electronic textiles to fabricate smart clothes to sustainably operate mobile or wearable electronics.
The material properties, including Young's modulus, Poisson's ratio, and density, of the structural components in the stator end winding of a typical 600-MW turbogenerator were experimentally ...measured; the equivalent bending stiffness of the conductor bars are determined by the three-point bending test, and the lower orders of natural frequencies and mode shapes were measured by modal test. The finite-element model of the stator end winding is set up, and its dynamic characteristics are numerically analyzed by means of the ABAQUS software. The numerical model is validated by the consistence of the numerically determined natural frequencies corresponding to the modes with elliptic shape with those measured by the modal test. With the finite-element model, parametric study on the natural frequencies and modes of the end winding is performed, which behaves instructive significance for the design and improvement of the turbogenerator stator end windings.
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