In today's digital age, the need and interest in personal and portable electronics shows a dramatic growth trend in daily life parallel to the developments in sensors technologies and the internet. Wearable electronics that can be attached to clothing, accessories, and the human body are one of the most promising subfields. The energy requirement for the devices considering the reduction in device sizes and the necessity of being flexible and light, the existing batteries are insufficient and nanogenerators have been recognized a suitable energy source in the last decade. The mechanical energy created by the daily activities of the human body is an accessible and natural energy source for nanogenerators. Fiber‐structured functional materials contribute to the increase in energy efficiency due to their effective surface to volume ratio while providing the necessary compatibility and comfort for the movements in daily life with its flexibility and lightness. Among the potential solutions, electrospinning stands out as a promising technique that can meet these requirements, allowing for simple, versatile, and continuous fabrication. Herein, wearable electronics and their future potential, electrospinning, and its place in energy applications are overviewed. Moreover, piezoelectric, triboelectric, and hybrid nanogenerators fabricated or associated with electrospun fibrous materials are presented.
Silver nanowires (AgNWs) have attracted considerable interest from both academia and industry owing to their excellent electrical, optical, and chemical properties. For large‐scale synthesis of AgNWs, the polyol method involving ethylene glycol, a toxic alcohol, has been widely used. We herein report on a facile, green, high yield, transition metal salt promoted, open atmosphere method for the synthesis of high quality AgNWs in a glycerol‐water mixture. We have shown that transition metal salts have a strong influence on the morphology of AgNWs. Importantly, in the presence of copper(II) chloride, AgNWs with a high aspect ratio of around 400 (length, 36 μm; diameter, 90 nm) were obtained. Additionally, for the first time, we have demonstrated AgNWs based flexible transparent conductive electrodes (TCEs) on poly(sodium 4‐styrenesulfonate) (PSS) treated polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate with a sheet resistance of 34 Ω/sq and transmittance of 91 % at 550 nm. The PSS layer on the PET substrate generated a highly hydrophilic surface, which boosts interaction of AgNWs with the PET surface. We envision that our results would play a significant role both in the synthesis of AgNWs with high aspect ratio and also in designing new rigid and flexible TCEs having high transmittance and low sheet resistance for applications especially in printable solar cells, organic light emitting diodes, and high performance flexible electronics.
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