Textiles that are capable of harvesting biomechanical energy via triboelectric effects are of interest for self-powered wearable electronics. Fabrication of conformable and durable textiles with high triboelectric outputs remains challenging. Here we propose a washable skin-touch-actuated textile-based triboelectric nanogenerator for harvesting mechanical energy from both voluntary and involuntary body motions. Black phosphorus encapsulated with hydrophobic cellulose oleoyl ester nanoparticles serves as a synergetic electron-trapping coating, rendering a textile nanogenerator with long-term reliability and high triboelectricity regardless of various extreme deformations, severe washing, and extended environmental exposure. Considerably high output (~250–880 V, ~0.48–1.1 µA cm−2) can be attained upon touching by hand with a small force (~5 N) and low frequency (~4 Hz), which can power light-emitting diodes and a digital watch. This conformable all-textile-nanogenerator is incorporable onto cloths/skin to capture the low output of 60 V from subtle involuntary friction with skin, well suited for users’ motion or daily operations.

Piezoelectric nanogenerators with large output, high sensitivity, and good flexibility have attracted extensive interest in wearable electronics and personal healthcare. In this paper, the authors propose a high-performance flexible piezoelectric nanogenerator based on piezoelectrically enhanced nanocomposite micropillar array of polyvinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene (P(VDF-TrFE))/barium titanate (BaTiO ) for energy harvesting and highly sensitive self-powered sensing. By a reliable and scalable nanoimprinting process, the piezoelectrically enhanced vertically aligned P(VDF-TrFE)/BaTiO nanocomposite micropillar arrays are fabricated. The piezoelectric device exhibits enhanced voltage of 13.2 V and a current density of 0.33 µA cm , which an enhancement by a factor of 7.3 relatives to the pristine P(VDF-TrFE) bulk film. The mechanisms of high performance are mainly attributed to the enhanced piezoelectricity of the P(VDF-TrFE)/BaTiO nanocomposite materials and the improved mechanical flexibility of the micropillar array. Under mechanical impact, stable electricity is stably generated from the nanogenerator and used to drive various electronic devices to work continuously, implying its significance in the field of consumer electronic devices. Furthermore, it can be applied as self-powered flexible sensor work in a noncontact mode for detecting air pressure and wearable sensors for detecting some human vital signs including different modes of breath and heartbeat pulse, which shows its potential applications in flexible electronics and medical sciences.

Smart sensing electronic devices with good transparency, high stretchability, and self-powered sensing characteristics are essential in wearable health monitoring systems. This paper innovatively proposes a stretchable nanocomposite nanogenerator with good transparency that can be conformally attached to the human body to harvest biomechanical energy and monitor physiological signals. The work reports an innovative device that uses sprayed silver nanowires as transparent electrodes and sandwiches a nanocomposite of piezoelectric BaTiO and polydimethylsiloxane as the sensing layer, which exhibits good transparency and mechanical transformability with stretchable, foldable, and twistable properties. The highly flexible nanogenerator affords a good input-output linearity under the vertical force and the sensing ability to detect lateral stretching deformation up to 60% strain under piezoelectric mechanisms. Furthermore, the proposed device can effectively harvest touch energies from the human body as a single-electrode triboelectric nanogenerator. Under periodic contact and separation, a maximum output voltage of 105 V, a current density of 6.5 μA/cm, and a power density of 102 μW/cm can be achieved, exhibiting a good power generation performance. Owing to the high conformability and excellent sensitivity of the nanogenerator, it can also act as a self-powered wearable sensor attached to different parts of the human body for real-time monitoring of the human physiological signals such as eye blinking, pronunciation, arm movement, and radial artery pulse. The designed nanocomposite nanogenerator shows great potential for use in self-powered e-skins and healthcare monitoring systems.

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Flexible tactile sensors with high sensitivity, good flexibility and the capability of measuring multidirectional forces are urgently required in modern robot technology and flexible electronic applications. Here, we present a flexible three-axial tactile sensor using piezoelectricity enhanced P(VDF-TrFE) micropillars. For achieving three-axis force measurement, the vertical aligned P(VDF-TrFE) micropillars are sandwiched between four square bottom electrodes and a common top electrode to form four symmetrically arranged piezoelectric sensing units. An elastomeric PDMS bump is fixed on the common top electrode surface to effectively transfer the contact force to the four sensing units. Taking advantage of the high sensitivity and good flexibility of the imprinted P(VDF-TrFE) micropillars, the resultant four distributed piezoelectric units are highly sensitive to the strain and can generate related signals corresponding to the compressive and tensile stress, from which the direction and the amplitude of the applied force can be deduced. The structural design, manufacturing technique，the three-axial force measuring principle, and sensing performance characterization of the proposed tactile sensor are presented in this paper. The sensitivities for X-, Y-, and Z-axis force components are calibrated as 0.3738 V N −1 , 0.4146 V N −1 , and 0.3443 V N −1 in experimental study. Furthermore, the proposed tactile sensor array is successfully integrated with a magnetic bar consist of NdFeB/ PDMS composites to construct a magnetic actuator with sensing ability. These results give the flexible three-axial tactile sensor high potential for use in advanced robots, wearable electronics and a variety of human-machine interface implementations.

Liquid-crystal elastomer (LCE)-based soft robots and devices via an electrothermal effect under a low driving voltage have attracted a great deal of attention for their ability on generating larger stress, reversible deformation, and versatile actuation modes. However, electrothermal materials integrated with LCE easily induce the uncertainty of a soft actuator due to the non-uniformity on temperature distribution, inconstant resistance in the deformation process, and slow responsivity after voltage on/ off. In this paper, a low-voltage-actuated soft artificial muscle based on LCE and a flexible electrothermal film is presented. At 6.5 V, a saturation temperature of 189 °C can be reached with a heating rate of 21 °C/s, which allows the soft artificial muscle quick and significant contraction and is suitable for untethered operation. Meanwhile, uniform temperature distribution and stable resistance of the flexible electrothermal film in the deformation process are obtained, leading to a work density of 9.97 kJ/m 3 , an actuating stress of 0.46 MPa, and controllable deformation of the soft artificial muscle. Finally, programmable low-voltage-controlled soft artificial muscles are fabricated by tailoring the flexible electrothermal film or designing structured heating pattern, including a prototype of soft finger-like gripper for transporting small objects, which clearly demonstrates the potential of low-voltage-actuated soft artificial muscles in soft robotics applications.

The ongoing revolution of human–robot interactions and electronic skins has created new requirements for tactile sensors, including good mechanical flexibility, high sensitivity, and the availability of distributed pixels for detecting force distribution. Here, a highly sensitive flexible sensor array based on piezoelectricity‐enhanced vertically aligned P(VDF‐TrFE) micropillars is developed for dynamic tactile sensing. The core piezoelectric sensing micropillars are fabricated using a straightforward and scalable nanoimprinting technology and then sandwiched between a pair of cross electrode arrays to construct multiplexed sensor arrays. Due to the proposed structural design and nanoimprinting methodology, the sensor pixels exhibit uniform output generation, robust output stability, and scalable fabrication ability. In addition, taking advantage of the high compressibility and enhanced strain of the piezoelectric micropillars compared to planar films, the microstructured sensors show an enhanced sensitivity of 228.2 mV N−1 and a highly linear response to loads. By integrating the flexible sensor with a portable signal processing circuit, a complete tactile sensing system is successfully developed to provide clear intuitive user interfaces. The good flexibility and robust stability of the sensor arrays enable them to be attached onto curved surface for real‐time tracking of dynamic force and imaging the force distribution.

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