Multifunctional electronic textiles (E-textiles) with embedded electric circuits hold great application prospects for future wearable electronics. However, most E-textiles still have critical challenges, including air permeability, satisfactory washability, and mass fabrication. In this work, we fabricate a washable E-textile that addresses all of the concerns and shows its application as a self-powered triboelectric gesture textile for intelligent human-machine interfacing. Utilizing conductive carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and screen-printing technology, this kind of E-textile embraces high conductivity (0.2 kΩ/sq), high air permeability (88.2 mm/s), and can be manufactured on common fabric at large scales. Due to the advantage of the interaction between the CNTs and the fabrics, the electrode shows excellent stability under harsh mechanical deformation and even after being washed. Moreover, based on a single-electrode mode triboelectric nanogenerator and electrode pattern design, our E-textile exhibits highly sensitive touch/gesture sensing performance and has potential applications for human-machine interfacing.
The demand of flexible energy storage devices for portable and wearable electronics has become increasingly urgent due to the rapid development of microelectronic products, wearable devices, and smart skin. [1][2][3][4][5][6] Some of the most effective and practical technologies for electrochemical energy conversion and storage are batteries, fuel cells, and supercapacitors. [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] Among them, supercapacitors (SCs) have attracted intensive attentions due to their high power density and long lifecycle. [9,13,[16][17][18] The energy storage is performed by ion adsorption or fast surface redox reaction at the interface between electrodes and electrolyte. Moreover, all-solid-state microsupercapacitors (MSCs) can greatly facilitate the development The graphene with 3D porous network structure is directly laser-induced on polyimide sheets at room temperature in ambient environment by an inexpensive and one-step method, then transferred to silicon rubber substrate to obtain highly stretchable, transparent, and flexible electrode of the all-solidstate planar microsupercapacitors. The electrochemical capacitance properties of the graphene electrodes are further enhanced by nitrogen doping and with conductive poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) coating. With excellent flexibility, stretchability, and capacitance properties, the planar microsupercapacitors present a great potential in fashionable and comfortable designs for wearable electronics.
Lithium metal batteries show great potential in energy storage because of their high energy density. Nevertheless, building a stable solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) and restraining the dendrite growth are difficult to realize with traditional liquid electrolytes. Solid and gel electrolytes are considered promising candidates to restrain the dendrites growth, while they are still limited by low ionic conductivity and incompatible interphases. Herein, a dual‐salt (LiTFSI‐LiPF6) gel polymer electrolyte (GPE) with 3D cross‐linked polymer network is designed to address these issues. By introducing a dual salt in 3D structure fabricated using an in situ polymerization method, the 3D‐GPE exhibits a high ionic conductivity (0.56 mS cm−1 at room temperature) and builds a robust and conductive SEI on the lithium metal surface. Consequently, the Li metal batteries using 3D‐GPE can markedly reduce the dendrite growth and achieve 87.93% capacity retention after cycling for 300 cycles. This work demonstrates a promising method to design electrolytes for lithium metal batteries.
In recent years, skin‐like pressure sensors with high sensitivity and excellent flexibility are widely demonstrated for electronic skins. However, most of the reported skin‐like pressure sensors are still based on airtight films, resulting in limited air permeability. Herein, cost‐effective and capable processes of large‐scale production are reported for lightweight and breathable pressure sensors based on nanofiber membranes (NM). The pressure sensor is composed of a layer‐by‐layer structure of poly(vinylidene fluoride) NM for substrates, silver nanowires for electrodes, and thermoplastic polyurethane NM for the dielectric layer through screen printing and ultrasonic bonding techniques. Benefiting from the high porosity of NM, the capacitive pressure sensor possesses unique performance, including a superior sensitivity of 4.2 kPa−1, a fast response time (<26 ms), an ultralow detection limit (1.6 Pa), and excellent breathability (Gurley value = 17.3 s/100 mL). Furthermore, the pressure sensor is not only applicable to monitor human physiological signals, but also to detect spatial pressure distribution. These results indicate that the breathable and screen‐print pressure sensor is promising for electronic skins with air permeability.
Broadening the application area of the triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) is one of the research emphases in the study of the TENGs, whose output characteristic is high voltage with low current. Here we design a self-powered electrospinning system, which is composed of a rotating-disk TENG (R-TENG), a voltage-doubling rectifying circuit (VDRC), and a simple spinneret. The R-TENG can generate an alternating voltage up to 1400 V. By using a voltage-doubling rectifying circuit, a maximum constant direct voltage of 8.0 kV can be obtained under the optimal configuration and is able to power the electrospinning system for fabricating various polymer nanofibers, such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyamide-6 (PA6), polyacrylonitrile (PAN), polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF), and thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPU). The system demonstrates the capability of a TENG for high-voltage applications, such as manufacturing nanofibers by electrospinning.
Heterojunction photocatalysts at present are still suffering from the low charge separation/transfer efficiency due to the poor charge mobility of semiconductor‐based photocatalysts. Atomic‐scale heterojunction‐type photocatalysts are regarded as a promising and effective strategy to overcome the drawbacks of traditional photocatalysts for higher photoenergy conversion efficiencies. Herein, an atomic‐scale heterojunction composed of a boron nitride monolayer and graphene (h‐BN‐C/G) is constructed to significantly shorten the charge transfer path to promote the activation of molecular oxygen for artificial photosynthesis (exemplified with oxidative coupling of amines to imines). As the thinnest heterojunction, h‐BN‐C/G gives the highest conversion, which is eightfold higher than that of the mechanical mixture of graphene and boron nitride monolayers. h‐BN‐C/G exhibits a high turnover frequency value (4.0 mmol benzylamine g−1 h−1), which is 2.5‐fold higher than that of the benchmark metal‐free photocatalyst in the literature under even critical conditions.
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