Biomechanical energy harvesting textiles based on nanogenerators that convert mechanical energy into electricity have broad application prospects in next-generation wearable electronic devices. However, the difficult-to-weave structure, limited flexibility and stretchability, small device size and poor weatherability of conventional nanogenerator-based devices have largely hindered their real-world application. Here, we report a highly stretchable triboelectric yarn that involves unique structure design based on intrinsically elastic silicone rubber tubes and extrinsically elastic built-in stainless steel yarns. By using a modified melt-spinning method, we realize scalable-manufacture of the self-powered yarn. A hundred-meter-length triboelectric yarn is demonstrated, but not limited to this size. The triboelectric yarn shows a large working strain (200%) and promising output. Moreover, it has superior performance in liquid, therefore showing all-weather durability. We also show that the development of this energy yarn facilitates the manufacturing of large-area self-powered textiles and provide an attractive direction for the study of amphibious wearable technologies.
Emerging smart textiles have enriched a variety of wearable technologies, including fiber optic technology. Optic fibers are widely applied in communication, sensing, and healthcare, and smart textiles enable fiber optic technology to be worn close to soft and curved human body parts for personalized functions. This review briefly introduces wearable fiber optic applications with various functions, including fashion and esthetics, vital signal monitoring, and disease treatment. The main working principles of side emission, wavelength modulation, and intensity modulation are summarized. In addition, textile fabrication techniques, including weaving and knitting, are discussed and illustrated as combination methods of embedding fiber optic technology into textile fabric. In conclusion, the combination of optical fibers and textiles has drawn considerable interest and developed rapidly. This work provides an overview of textile-based wearable fiber optic technology and discusses potential textile fabrication techniques for further improvement of wearable fiber optic applications.
Sweating during exercise, physical labor, or hot weather leads to a feeling of discomfort. The stuffiness, stickiness, and heaviness brought by sweat may promote negative emotions or disease. Clothing, textiles, and wearable devices exacerbate these problems by restricting evaporation of sweat. Here, a textile that can promote and enhance sweat evaporation by coupling wicking and polarization is reported. The wicking is produced by the wettability gradient and pore size, which make the surface moisture content of the textile in contact with the skin strictly 0%. The polarization is driven by a ferroelectric‐enhanced triboelectric textile. This textile degrades large‐sized water clusters into small‐sized water clusters or water monomers, so that the textiles have an excellent moisture evaporation rate (4.4 and 3.6 times faster than the cotton and polyester textiles, respectively). This work provides a new source of inspiration for quick‐drying textiles and also finds an attractive application for triboelectric technology.
This paper reports a nano-opto-mechanical pressure sensor based on nano-scaled ring resonator. The pressure is measured through the output spectrum shift which is induced via mechanical deformation of the ring resonator. The sensitivity as high as 1.47 pm/kPa has been experimentally achieved which agrees with numerical prediction. Due to the strong variation of sensitivity with different ring radius and thickness of the diaphragm, the pressure sensor can be used to form an array structure to detect the pressure distribution in highly accurate measurement with low-cost advantages. The nano-opto-mechanical pressure sensor has potential applications such as shear stress displacement detection, pressure wave detector and pressure mapping etc.
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