Superhydrophobic
surfaces repel water and other liquids such as tissue fluid, blood,
urine, and pus, which can open up a new avenue for the development
of biomedical devices and has led to promising advances across diverse
fields, including plasma separator devices, blood-repellent sensors,
vascular stents, and heart valves. Here, the fabrication of superhydrophobic
liquid–solid contact triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) and
their biomedical applications as droplet sensors are reported. Triboelectrification
energy can be captured and released when droplets are colliding or
slipping on the superhydrophobic layer. The developed superhydrophobic
TENG possesses multiple advantages in terms of simple fabrication,
bendability, self-cleaning, self-adhesiveness, high sensitivity, and
repellency to not only water but also a variety of solutions, including
blood with a contact angle of 158.6°. As a self-powered sensor,
the developed prototypes of a drainage bottle droplet sensor and a
smart intravenous injection monitor based on the superhydrophobic
liquid–solid contact TENG can monitor the clinical drainage
operation and intravenous infusion in real time, respectively. These
prototypes suggest the potential merit of this superhydrophobic liquid–solid
contact TENG in clinical application, paving the way for accurately
monitoring clinical drainage operations and intravenous injection
or blood transfusion in the future.
Electronic fibers used to fabricate wearable triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) for harvesting human mechanical energy have been extensively explored. However, little attention is paid to their mutual advantages of environmental friendliness, mechanical properties, and stability. Here, we report a super-strong, biodegradable, and washable cellulose-based conductive macrofibers, which is prepared by wet-stretching and wet-twisting bacterial cellulose hydrogel incorporated with carbon nanotubes and polypyrrole. The cellulose-based conductive macrofibers possess high tensile strength of 449 MPa (able to lift 2 kg weights), good electrical conductivity (~ 5.32 S cm−1), and excellent stability (Tensile strength and conductivity only decrease by 6.7% and 8.1% after immersing in water for 1 day). The degradation experiment demonstrates macrofibers can be degraded within 108 h in the cellulase solution. The designed fabric-based TENG from the cellulose-base conductive macrofibers shows a maximum open-circuit voltage of 170 V, short-circuit current of 0.8 µA, and output power at 352 μW, which is capable of powering the commercial electronics by charging the capacitors. More importantly, the fabric-based TENGs can be attached to the human body and work as self-powered sensors to effectively monitor human motions. This study suggests the potential of biodegradable, super-strong, and washable conductive cellulose-based fiber for designing eco-friendly fabric-based TENG for energy harvesting and biomechanical monitoring.
Chronic wounds are associated with infectious microbial complex communities called biofilms. The management of chronic wound infection is limited by the complexity of selecting an appropriate antimicrobial dressing with antibiofilm activity due to antimicrobial resistance in biofilms. Herein, the in situ developed bacterial cellulose/poly(vinyl alcohol) (BC–PVA) composite is ex situ modified with genipin‐crosslinked silk sericin (SS) and azithromycin (AZM) (SSga). The composite is evaluated as a wound dressing material for preventing the development, dispersion, and/or eradication of microbial biofilm. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy confirms the intermolecular interactions between the components of BC–PVA@SSga scaffolds. The addition of PVA during BC production significantly increases the porosity from 53.5% ± 2.3% to 83.5% ± 2.9%, the pore size from 2.3 ± 1.9 to 16.8 ± 4.5 µm, the fiber diameter from 35.5 ± 10 to 120 ± 27.4 nm, and improves the thermal stability and flexibility. Studies using bacteria and fungi indicate high inhibition and disruption of biofilms upon AZM addition. In vitro biocompatibility analysis confirms the nontoxic nature of BC–PVA@SSga toward HaCaT and NIH3T3 cells, whereas the addition of SS enhances cell proliferation. The developed BC–PVA@SSga accelerates wound healing in the infected mouse model, thus can be a promising wound dressing biomaterial.
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