Elsevier

Nano Energy

Volume 102, November 2022, 107687
Nano Energy

A high-performance, biocompatible, and degradable piezoresistive-triboelectric hybrid device for cross-scale human activities monitoring and self-powered smart home system

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2022.107687Get rights and content

Highlights

  • PTHD with biocompatibility and degradability exhibits excellent pressure sensing performance and self-powered capability.

  • A bottom stable resistance layer is introduced to help PTHD achieve high sensitivity and a broad pressure response range.

  • Monitoring of the cross-scale human activities ranging from tiny pulse to strenuous running is realized.

  • A self-powered smart home system is developed by adopting PTHD as the self-powered switch.

Abstract

Developing wearable devices that present high-performance, human and environment-friendly, as well as excellent degradability, is crucial for personal health, environmental protection, and information security, playing a significant role in application of Internet of Things (IoT). Here, a biocompatible and degradable hybrid device (PTHD) that enables high-sensitive detection of pressure over a broad range and a remarkable self-powered capability is reported by the conjunction of the piezoresistive layer and triboelectric layer. Particularly, by dedicatedly introducing a bottom stable resistance layer, the piezoresistive layer endows the PTHD with both a high sensitivity of 281,591.8 kPa-1 and a wide response range of 0–60 kPa, which facilitates the monitoring of the cross-scale human activities ranging from tiny pulse to strenuous running. Additionally, benefiting from the excellent self-powered capability of the PTHD enabled by the triboelectric layer, a self-powered smart home system is also constructed for real-time alarming the aged falls, controlling the smart home appliances, and managing the smart entrance guard. Lastly, the PTHD is selected for culture cells and degradation experiments, proving its good biocompatibility, degradability, and potential as transient electronics. The proposed PTHD presents a credible pathway for developing comfortable and eco-friendly wearable electronics for human activities monitoring and a self-powered smart home system, which contributes to making humans a safer and more convenient lifestyle.

Graphical Abstract

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Wearable electronic devices with high performance as well as human and environment-friendly have attracted extensive attention due to the growing demand for health monitoring and smart home frameworks in Internet of Things (IoT). In this work, a biocompatible and degradable hybrid device (PTHD) by the conjunction of the piezoresistive layer and triboelectric layer is developed, which enables high-sensitive detection of pressure over a broad range and a remarkable self-powered capability. In addition, the monitoring of the cross-scale human activities, as well as a self-powered smart home system are successfully explored.

Introduction

With the increasing demand for health and life quality of humans, wearable electronic devices have been widely applied in health monitoring [1], [2], [3] and smart home frameworks in Internet of Things (IoT) [4], [5], [6]. Due to the conspicuous merits of simple structure and high sensitivity [7], [8], [9], a flexible piezoresistive sensor that relies on the resistance changing to respond to external pressure serves as one of the most important components in wearable electronic devices and becomes the emphasis of extensive attention and research [10], [11], [12], [13]. To date, much effort has been dedicated to improving the performance of such a piezoresistive sensor including high sensitivity and broad response range, which enables the piezoresistive sensor to achieve cross-scale monitoring from weak physiological signals to high-intensity motion signals and thus better meet the need of health monitoring [14], [15], [16], [17], [18]. For example, Cheng et al. proposed an active layer with a bioinspired micro-spinous structure and effectively improved the sensitivity of the flexible piezoresistive sensor, offering an opportunity to accurately monitor weak signals like pulse [19]. And recently, a broad response range of 0–218 kPa was realized by Zhao and coworkers, which endowed the flexible piezoresistive sensor with a capability of identifying strong signals like finger joint movement [20]. However, most of the reported studies mainly focused on the promotion of either sensitivity or the response range merely [19], [20], [21], [22], and the combination of high sensitivity and broad response range in a flexible piezoresistive sensor is still a great challenge. In addition, considering the huge total power consumption of the wearable electronic products in IoT, triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), a self-powered electronic device relying on the coupling effect of contact electrification and electrostatic induction [23], [24], has become one of the current research hotspots [25], [26], [27], [28], [29]. By introducing a series of nano-micro scale functional layers, such as nanofibers (NFs) [30], nanowires [31], and fish-scale-like arrays [32], researchers developed TENGs with high electrical output performance and successfully applied the TENGs as sustainable power units in the application of power supply system [33], [34]. More importantly, the TENG is capable of operating as a self-powered sensor without an additional power supply, which is potential for the construction of smart home systems [35], [36].

Currently, most of the wearable electronics adopt synthetic polymers as substrates and matrix materials, which may cause skin problems such as redness after long-time wear [37], [38], [39]. Accordingly, there is an urgent need to develop wearable electronic devices equipped with preferable biocompatibility, allowing the devices to be more suitable for long-term adhesion to the human skin. Beyond that, the non-degradation problem faced by most wearable electronics is easy to trigger the so-called “micro-nano plastic crisis” [40] as well as the accident potential of private information leakage, bringing out a great negative effect on the living environment and information security of humans. Therefore, one shall not limit the research focus on realizing excellent sensing performance, and it is also necessary to design and construct wearable electronic devices with favorably biocompatibility and degradability, which is of great significance to personal health, environmental protection, and information security.

In view of the aforementioned challenges, a flexible piezoresistive-triboelectric hybrid device (PTHD) is proposed, of which the functional layers are prepared based on a facile electrospinning technology followed by selected infiltration treatment (Fig. 1a and b). The PTHD not only enables high-sensitive detection of pressure over a broad range and a remarkable self-powered capability, but also exhibits excellent biocompatibility and degradability. Thereinto, in conjunction with the intentionally introduced bottom stable resistance layer, the piezoresistive layer allows the proposed PTHD to simultaneously achieve the detection of pressure information with high sensitivity and a broad range. Benefiting from that, the proposed PTHD accomplishes the cross-scale monitoring of human signals ranging from tiny deformation of the pulse signal to large-scale movement of the running signal. In addition, several prospective applications of the PTHD in a self-powered smart home system including the real-time aged falls alarm, smart home appliances control and smart entrance guard management are successfully explored (Fig. 1c). Moreover, the success of the cell culture experiment by using the proposed PTHD demonstrates its excellent biocompatibility. Lastly, the proposed PTHD is rapidly dissolved when we soak it in the deionized water and conduct sonication, which shows its superior degradability and potential in the field of transient electronics. Considering the above merits, the proposed PTHD presents a powerful way for constructing wearable electronics that enable both cross-scale pressure detection and self-powered sensing and provides a guiding approach for wearable electronics evolving towards the characteristics that are harmless to physical wellness, conducive to sustainable development, and capable of ensuring information security.

Section snippets

Structure design and fabrication process of the PTHD

Fig. 1a shows the schematic diagram of the proposed PTHD, which integrates a piezoresistive part that enables the highly sensitive detection of the pressure over a broad range and a triboelectric part that endows a remarkable self-powered capability, aiming at realizing the hybrid functions of the PTHD by the two different parts. The piezoresistive part is comprised of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)/poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) NFs film as the bottom stable

Conclusion

In this work, PTHD, a flexible piezoresistive-triboelectric hybrid device is proposed with high sensitivity over a broad pressure range and excellent self-powered capability, incorporated with desirable biocompatibility and degradability. Here, to improve the sensitivity and response range of the PTHD toward the pressure, the PVA/PEDOT:PSS bottom stable resistance layer is ingeniously introduced to work together with the Zein/PVA/CNT piezoresistive layer, both of which are fabricated by the

Fabrication of the PVA/PEDOT:PSS NFs film

To better pursue the biocompatibility and degradability of the PTHD, PVA and PEDOT:PSS are selected to fabricate the PVA/PEDOT:PSS bottom stable resistance layer, which have been widely used as the substrate and conductive filler owing to their superior biocompatibility, environmental friendliness, and easy access [50], [51]. Firstly, 10 wt% PVA solution was prepared by dissolving the PVA (RHAWN, China) in deionized water at 85 ℃ with stirring. The PVA NFs film was prepared by electrospinning

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Huiyun Zhang: Experiment, Writing – original draft, Software. Feifei Yin: Experiment, Writing – original draft, Software. Shuo Shang: Experiment, Validation. Yang Li: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – review & editing, Supervision. Zhicheng Qiu: Experiment, Software. Qinghui Lin: Experiment, Software. Xiao Wei: Experiment, Software. Shouliang Li: Experiment, Software. Nam Young Kim: Writing – review & editing. Guozhen Shen: Conceptualization, Methodology, Supervision.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant (62174068, 61888102), Rizhao City Key Research and Development Program under Grant (2021ZDYF010102), and Project of Shan dong Province Higher Educational Youth Innovation Science and Technology Program under Grant (2019KJN028).

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    These authors contributed equally: Huiyun Zhang, Feifei Yin, Shuo Shang.

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