Wearable Electronic Textiles from Nanostructured Piezoelectric Fibers

Abstract

to produce a new generation of smart garments.Such affordable smart garments could fulfil diverse applications, ranging from work wear in specific industries to the almost infinite scenarios of personal use including energy harvesting/storage, force/pressure measurement, porosity or color variation, and sensors (movement, temperature, chemicals). [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] However, performance, scalability, and cost problems have restricted the deployment of currently available smart textiles. To build smart textiles on an industrial scale, method of manufacturing and material selection are two important requirements. The approach of new energy materials and novel fabrication methods are essential to develop wearable technologies. Wearable energy generating devices that can be seamlessly integrated into garments are a critical component of the wearable electronics genre. Currently flexible fiber energy harvesters have attracted significant attention due to their ability to be integrated into fabrics, or stitched into existing textiles. Large-scale production of energy harvester fibers using conventional manufacturing processes, however, is still a challenge.Energy harvesting from environmental mechanical sources such as body movements including finger imparting, [8] pushing, [9] stretching, [10] bending, [11] twisting, [12] air flow, [13] transportation movement, [14] and sound waves [15] has attracted widespread attention to promote flexible self-powered devices. [16] The best common mechanical energy harvesting methods are based on piezoelectric materials. [17] Piezoelectric materials can be classified in three categories: piezoelectric ceramics, piezoelectric polymers, and piezoelectric composites. [18] Unlike the energy harvesters utilizing solar or thermal energy, performance of piezoelectric generators is generally not limited by environmental factors. [19] Piezoelectric generators have received massive interest in energy harvesting technology due to their unique ability to capture the ambient vibrations to generate electric signals. [20] The unique energy transduction of piezoelectric materials enables their applications in fields of energy harvesting, actuators, [21] sensors, [22] structural health monitoring, and use in biomedical devices. [23] Numerous approaches have been used to fabricate piezoelectric generators, such as coating, [24] spinning, [25] depositing, [26] and printing. [27] Wearable energy harvesting is of practical interest for many years and for diverse applications, including development of self-powered wireless sensors within garments for human health monitoring. Herein, a novel approach is reported to create wearable energy generators and sensors using nanostructured hybrid piezoelectric fibers and exploiting the enormous variety of textile architectures. It is found that high performance hybrid piezofiber is obtained using a barium titanate (BT) nanoparticle and poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) with a mass ratio of 1:10. These fibers are knitted to form a wearable energy generator that pr...

Highly Stretchable Self‐Powered Wearable Electrical Energy Generator and Sensors

“…The optimized BT concentration has the value of 10 wt% based on our previous work. [ 24 ] Stable dispersions of rGO in DMF facilitated their mixing with the PVDF polymer, which can be readily dissolved in DMF as well. Figure 2b shows the images of the PVDF nanocomposites films.…”

Bending Analysis of Polymer-Based Flexible Antennas for Wearable, General IoT Applications: A Review

“…This is because these materials are usually rigid, costly, and lack flexibility and mechanical resilience. A lot of research has already explored numerous materials which exhibit suitable properties as a substrate for conductive materials for antennas are conductive polymers [ 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 ], conductive threads [ 35 , 36 , 37 ] and conductive textile [ 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 ]. For dielectric materials, Polyimide (PI) [ 7 , 11 , 26 , 29 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 ], Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) [ 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 ], Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) [ 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 ,…”

Composites, Fabrication and Application of Polyvinylidene Fluoride for Flexible Electromechanical Devices: A Review

“…A schematic diagram of the energy harvesting device is shown in Figure 10a. In 2020, Mokhtari et al [143] fabricated a high-performance hybrid piezofiber composed of a PVDF and barium titanate (BT) nanoparticle (mass ratio 10:1). These fibers are knitted to fabricate a wearable energy generator with a power density of 87 µW cm -3 and a maximum voltage output of 4 V. In 2019, Sang et al [144] prepared a wearable piezoelectric energy harvester based on core-shell piezoelectric yarns prepared by twining the yarns around a conductive thread.…”