Human-machine interfaces (HMIs) experience increasing requirements for intuitive and effective manipulation. Current commercialized solutions of glove-based HMI are limited by either detectable motions or the huge cost on fabrication, energy, and computing power. We propose the haptic-feedback smart glove with triboelectric-based finger bending sensors, palm sliding sensor, and piezoelectric mechanical stimulators. The detection of multidirectional bending and sliding events is demonstrated in virtual space using the self-generated triboelectric signals for various degrees of freedom on human hand. We also perform haptic mechanical stimulation via piezoelectric chips to realize the augmented HMI. The smart glove achieves object recognition using machine learning technique, with an accuracy of 96%. Through the integrated demonstration of multidimensional manipulation, haptic feedback, and AI-based object recognition, our glove reveals its potential as a promising solution for low-cost and advanced human-machine interaction, which can benefit diversified areas, including entertainment, home healthcare, sports training, and medical industry.

The last decade has witnessed significant advances in energy harvesting technologies as a possible alternative to provide a continuous power supply for small, low-power devices in applications, such as wireless sensing, data transmission, actuation, and medical implants. Piezoelectric energy harvesting (PEH) has been a salient topic in the literature and has attracted widespread attention from researchers due to its advantages of simple architecture, high power density, and good scalability. This paper presents a comprehensive review on the state-of-the-art of piezoelectric energy harvesting. Various key aspects to improve the overall performance of a PEH device are discussed, including basic fundamentals and configurations, materials and fabrication, performance enhancement mechanisms, applications, and future outlooks.

Inorganic cesium lead halide perovskites with superb thermal stability show promise to fabricate long-term operational photovoltaic devices. However, the cubic phase (α) of CsPbI 3 with an appropriate band gap is unstable in air. We discover that highly stable α-CsPbI 3 can be obtained in dry air (temperature: 20−30 °C; humidity: 10−20%) by replacing PbI 2 with HPbI 3 in a one-step deposition solution. Furthermore, the band gap of HPbI 3processed α-CsPbI 3 is advantageously reduced from 1.72 to 1.68 eV due to the existence of tensile lattice strain. By employing such an α-CsPbI 3 film in carbon-based perovskite solar cells (C-PSCs), a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 9.5% is achieved, which is a record value for the α-CsPbI 3 PSCs without hole transport material. Most importantly, over 90% of the initial PCE is retained for nonencapsulated devices after 3000 h of storage in dry air. Therefore, HPbI 3 -based one-step deposition presents a promising strategy to prepare high-performance and air-stable α-CsPbI 3 PSCs.

The device instability has been an important issue for hybrid organic-inorganic halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs). This work intends to address this issue by exploiting inorganic perovskite (CsPbBr) as light absorber, accompanied by replacing organic hole transport materials (HTM) and the metal electrode with a carbon electrode. All the fabrication processes (including those for CsPbBr and the carbon electrode) in the PSCs are conducted in ambient atmosphere. Through a systematical optimization on the fabrication processes of CsPbBr film, carbon-based PSCs (C-PSCs) obtained the highest power conversion efficiency (PCE) of about 5.0%, a relatively high value for inorganic perovskite-based PSCs. More importantly, after storage for 250 h at 80 °C, only 11.7% loss in PCE is observed for CsPbBr C-PSCs, significantly lower than that for popular CHNHPbI C-PSCs (59.0%) and other reported PSCs, which indicated a promising thermal stability of CsPbBr C-PSCs.