Directional Moisture-Wicking Triboelectric Materials Enabled by Laplace Pressure Differences

Abstract

Wearable sensors are experiencing vibrant growth in the fields of health monitoring systems and human motion detection, with comfort becoming a significant research direction for wearable sensing devices. However, the weak moisture-wicking capability of sensor materials leads to liquid retention, severely restricting the comfort of the wearable sensors. This study employs a pattern-guided alignment strategy to construct microhill arrays, endowing triboelectric materials with directional moisture-wicking capability. Within 2.25 s, triboelectric materials can quickly and directionally remove the droplets, driven by the Laplace pressure differences and the wettability gradient. The directional moisture-wicking triboelectric materials exhibit excellent pressure sensing performance, enabling rapid response/recovery (29.1/37.0 ms), thereby achieving real-time online monitoring of human respiration and movement states. This work addresses the long-standing challenge of insufficient moisture-wicking driving force in flexible electronic sensing materials, holding significant implications for enhancing the comfort and application potential of electronic skin and wearable electronic devices.

Smart Lanceolate Surface with Fast Fog-Digesting Performance for Triboelectric Energy Harvesting

“…Currently, research into energy harvesting based on fog is in its infancy. Conceptually, generating energy from fogwater involves a synergy between hygroscopic materials and energy-harvesting devices. , The hygroscopic material captures fog from the air and transfers it to a digestion device, which consumes or utilizes the water to generate electricity . For instance, after capturing fog droplets, their gravitational potential energy is utilized to convert it into electrical energy through an electromagnetic generator. ,, Specialized structures are employed for fog collection, whereas liquid–solid triboelectric nanogenerators directly capture transferred charges at the interface. − Both aspects exemplify the potential of harnessing fog for electricity generation.…”

Phase-Directed Assembly of Triboelectric Nanopaper for Self-Powered Noncontact Sensing

“…The rapidly advancing wearable technology is revolutionizing the way people communicate with each other and their surroundings, accelerating the integration of our lives into the intelligent information network of the Internet of Things (IoT), and serving as a driving force for continuous innovation in fields such as smart cities, digital twins, and precision medicine. − To unleash the immense potential of wearable sensing in diverse domains, noncontact wearable sensing technologies based on wireless interactions such as ultrasound, lidar, and infrared are emerging as a new trend, paving the way for a more secure and efficient wearable human-machine interaction perception network in the era of the Internet of Everything (IoE). − However, most current noncontact wearable sensors rely on external power sources, , posing a technical challenge to power the vast and growing array of noncontact sensing nodes in the IoT . Recently, triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) technology, based on the principles of contact electrification and electrostatic induction, has been demonstrated to seamlessly integrate energy harvesting and sensing detection in noncontact mode, offering a solution to the sustainable development challenges of noncontact sensing technologies. − …”