Shape-Adaptive, Self-Healable Triboelectric Nanogenerator with Enhanced Performances by Soft Solid–Solid Contact Electrification

Abstract

The viable application of soft electronics/robotics relies on the development of power devices which are desired to be flexible, deformable, or even self-healable. We report here a shape-adaptive, self-healable triboelectric nanogenerator (SS-TENG) for harvesting biomechanical energies. The use of a viscoelastic polymer, normally known as Silly Putty, as the electrification material and as the matrix of a carbon-nanotube-filled composite (CNT-putty) electrode endows the SS-TENG the capability of adapting to arbitrary irregular surfaces and instantaneous healing from mechanical damage (almost completely recovered in 3 min without extra stimuli). Furthermore, the output performances of the SS-TENG have also been significantly improved because (i) the ideal soft contact is achieved at the solid–solid interfaces for more effective contact electrification and (ii) the introduced cation dopants make the putty even more tribo-negative than polytetrafluoroethylene. The SS-TENG can be adhered to any curvy surface, tailored, and reshaped into arbitrary configurations and utilized as a power supply for small electronics, suggesting promising applications in soft electronics/robotics in the future.

Electron tunneling of hierarchically structured silver nanosatellite particles for highly conductive healable nanocomposites

“…A variety of mechanisms, such as metal-coordinated, covalent, and hydrogen bonds, have been investigated to synthesize healable polymer matrix [8][9][10][11] . In order to impart electrical conductivity (σ), various conductive fillers and conducting polymers were incorporated into the healable polymer matrix 4,6,[8][9][10][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] .…”

“…The healable conductive nanocomposites can be classified into two types depending on the moldability at room temperature; rigid/flexible/stretchable 4,[8][9][10][12][13][14][15] or moldable viscoelastic nanocomposites 6,[16][17][18][19][20][21][22] . The rigid/flexible/stretchable nanocomposites with crosslinking exhibited greater elastic behavior with little moldability 4,[8][9][10][12][13][14][15] .…”

Progress in wearable electronics/photonics—Moving toward the era of artificial intelligence and internet of things

“…As mentioned in the previous section, using self‐powered functional components in the whole system can effectively reduce the overall power consumption. Therefore, self‐powered HMIs with the capability to produce self‐generated signals under external mechanical stimulations have been widely developed in the past few years 104,251‐254 . According to the types of human‐machine interactions, common HMIs can be defined based on voice, breath, body motions, hand motions (tapping and sliding), hand/finger gesture, and so on.…”

Design of Electrode Materials for Stretchable Triboelectric Nanogenerators

“…Chen et al [33] demonstrate a stretchable and self-healing TENG utilizing viscoelastic supramolecular polymer (Putty) as triboelectric materials, mixture of carbon nanotubes and Putty as electrode materials (Figure 8d). The percolating method of configuring stretchable electrode is introduced in previous part.…”