Nowadays, great effort has been devoted to establishing wearable electronics with excellent stretchability, high sensitivity, good mechanical strength, and multifunctional characteristics. Herein, a soft conductive hydrogel is rationally designed by proportionally mixing silk fibroin, polyacrylamide, graphene oxide, and poly­(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly­(styrenesulfonate). The resultant hydrogel has considerable stretchability and compressibility, which enables it to be assembled into a strain/pressure sensor with a wide sensing range (strain, 2%–600%; pressure, 0.5–119.4 kPa) and reliable stability. Then, the corresponding sensor is capable of monitoring a series of physical signals of the human body (e.g., joint movement, facial gesture, pulse, breathing, etc.). In particular, the hydrogel-based sensor is biocompatible, with no anaphylactic reaction on human skin. More interestingly, this conductive hydrogel exhibits a positive response when it works in a triboelectric nanogenerator; consequently, it lights up 20 commericial green light-emitting diodes. Thus, this silk fibroin-based hydrogel is a kind of multifunctional material toward wearable electronics with versatile applications in health and exercise monitors, soft robots, and power sources.

Textile-based triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG) that can effectively harvest biomechanical energy and sense multifunctional posture and movement have a wide range of applications in next-generation wearable and portable electronic devices. Hence, bulk production of fine yarns with high triboelectric output through a continuous manufacturing process is an urgent task. Here, an ultralight single-electrode triboelectric yarn (SETY) with helical hybridized nano-micro core–shell fiber bundles is fabricated by a facile and continuous electrospinning technology. The obtained SETY device exhibits ultralightness (0.33 mg cm–1), extra softness, and smaller size (350.66 μm in diameter) compared to those fabricated by conventional fabrication techniques. Based on such a textile-based TENG, high energy-harvesting performance (40.8 V, 0.705 μA cm–2, and 9.513 nC cm–2) was achieved by applying a 2.5 Hz mechanical drive of 5 N. Importantly, the triboelectric yarns can identify textile materials according to their different electron affinity energies. In addition, the triboelectric yarns are compatible with traditional textile technology and can be woven into a high-density plain fabric for harvesting biomechanical energy and are also competent for monitoring tiny signals from humans or insects.

Fire disaster is one of the most common hazards that threaten public safety and social development: how to improve the fire escape and rescue capacity remains a huge challenge. Here, a 3D honeycomb‐structured woven fabric triboelectric nanogenerator (F‐TENG) based on a flame‐retardant wrapping yarn is developed. The wrapping yarn is fabricated through a continuous hollow spindle fancy twister technology, which is compatible with traditional textile production processes. The resulting 3D F‐TENG can be used in smart carpets as a self‐powered escape and rescue system that can precisely locate the survivor position and point out the escape route to timely assist victim search and rescuing. As interior decoration, the unique design of the honeycomb weaving structure endows the F‐TENG fabric with an excellent noise‐reduction ability. In addition, combining with its good machine washability, air permeability, flame‐retardency, durability, and repeatability features, the 3D F‐TENG may have great potential applications in fire rescue and wearable sensors as well as smart home decoration.

Clathrate hydrates (CHs) are promising molecular structures for versatile applications such as gas capture and storage, cold storage, and gas separation. Understanding the mechanical responses is of importance for utilizing and predicting the stability of their formations, but remains very limited. Here, mechanical characteristics of CHs entrapping a variety of gas molecules are investigated by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. All studied CHs are structurally stable host–host hydrogen (H)-bonds yet show distinct host–guest interaction energies under load-free conditions. Tension MD simulations reveal that the tensile strength and Young’s modulus of CHs depend not only on the size and shape of guest molecules but also on their polarity; however, all CHs undergo brittle fracture on either the (0 0 1) or (1 0 1) plane also relying on the type of guest molecules. Interestingly, elastic deformation of CHs causes a reduction in the number of H-bonds, yet stronger interaction of specific triatomic guest molecules@512 with the surrounding host-water molecules, in contrast to the case of those @51262. Structural analysis shows that multiatomic guest molecules@cages uniquely reorient due to misshaping of cages, and H-bonded angular deformation of water-cages plays a more crucial role in the elastic responses of CHs than straining of H-bonds.

As a kind of biocompatible material with long history, silk fibroin is one of the ideal platforms for on-skin and implantable electronic devices, especially for self-powered systems. In this work, to solve the intrinsic brittleness as well as poor chemical stability of pure silk fibroin film, mesoscopic doping of regenerated silk fibroin is introduced to promote the secondary structure transformation, resulting in huge improvement in mechanical flexibility (∼250% stretchable and 1000 bending cycles) and chemical stability (endure 100 °C and 3–11 pH). Based on such doped silk film (SF), a flexible, stretchable and fully bioabsorbable triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is developed to harvest biomechanical energy in vitro or in vivo for intelligent wireless communication, for example, such TENG can be attached on the fingers to intelligently control the electrochromic function of rearview mirrors, in which the transmittance can be easily adjusted by changing contact force or area. This robust TENG shows great potential application in intelligent vehicle, smart home and health care systems.