Contact Separation Triboelectric Nanogenerator Based Neural Interfacing for Effective Sciatic Nerve Restoration

Abstract

Peripheral nerve injuries represent one of the most common causes of permanent disabilities. Therapeutic electrical stimulation has been widely used in neural regeneration for decades. Combined with the implantation of a nerve cuff, several outcomes have proven effectiveness and feasibility in neuroprosthetic applications. However, the current electrical stimulation strategy fails to complete nerve repair. There is a lack of research on long‐term implantable nanogenerators in the neurostimulation scenario. Especially considering many disease models, those devices may not reach the in vitro simulative working setting. Thus, an implanted sciatic nerve stimulation system that spontaneously generates biphasic electric pulses in response to rats’ movement is developed. The electric signals generated by this device could stimulate injured sciatic nerve by cuff electrode. This work introduces an implantable self‐regulated neural electrical stimulation system generated by a contact separation triboelectric nanogenerator with a nerve cuff electrode and compares it with chronic therapeutic electrical stimulation for sciatic nerve restoration effect. Neural function restoration is observed in gait and histological analysis. Moreover, the upregulation of growth associated protein 43 can be a protentional target. This could have potential clinical application in facilitating closed‐loop energy harvesting for long‐term electrical stimulation.

Nerve Stimulation by Triboelectric Nanogenerator Based on Nanofibrous Membrane for Spinal Cord Injury

“…So far, there have been many studies on the use of TENG for nerve stimulation and SCI (Conta et al, 2021;Mathew et al, 2021), and through animal experiments, they have successfully repaired damaged nerves (Zheng et al, 2016b;Zhou et al, 2022), adjusted food intake to treat obesity (Yao et al, 2018), adjusted and controlled the anterior tibial bone (Lee et al, 2017), treatment of underactive bladder (Lee et al, 2019), represented the synaptic plasticity in vivo (Guan et al, 2020), treatment of atrial fibrillation (Sun et al, 2022). Combining TENG based on nanofiber membrane with nerve stimulation to relieve chronic pain disease and treat SCI will inevitably promote the development of nerve stimulation and give more patients the opportunity to recover.…”

“…Liu et al designed a breathactuated triboelectric sensor for simultaneous breath biomechanical monitoring and exhaled acetone concentration analysis (Liu et al, 2022). Su et al provide an overview of TENG-enabled self-powered (Lee et al, 2017;Li et al, 2017;Jensen and Brownstone, 2019;Zhou et al, 2022).…”

“…Scientists have carried out a lot of research in the field of TENG for nerve stimulation, and the feasibility of the system has been successfully proved by experiments on animals. Zhou et al developed an implantable self-regulating electrical nerve stimulation system based on the eccentric electrical nerve stimulation TENG they proposed previously, which can effectively promote synchronous regulation and regeneration of the sciatic nerve (Zhou et al, 2022). The working principle of this system is shown in Figure 2 (c).…”

“…(C) Design and working principle of the ISR-NES system. (D) Schematic diagram of the conceptual system using flexible neural interfaces and TENGs(Lee et al, 2017;Li et al, 2017;Jensen and Brownstone, 2019;Zhou et al, 2022).…”

Dual Redox Active Sites N‐C@Ni2P/NiSe2 Heterostructure Supercapacitor Integrated with Triboelectric Nanogenerator toward Efficient Energy Harvesting and Storage

“…Triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) based on contact electrification and electrostatic induction feature stand-alone, maintenance-free, and sustainable output, pioneering an entirely new way for electricity generation. [3,6,[34][35][36][37][38][39] Hitherto, significant progress has been made in developing high-performance TENG to harvest various forms of mechanical energy, which has promoted the thriving growth of the IoT. [40][41][42][43] It is well known that the difference in electronegativity between friction materials is crucial to the output characteristics of the TENG.…”