A Facile, Fabric Compatible, and Flexible Borophene Nanocomposites for Self‐Powered Smart Assistive and Wound Healing Applications

Abstract

Smart fabrics that can harvest ambient energy and provide diverse sensing functionality via triboelectric effects have evoked great interest for next‐generation healthcare electronics. Herein, a novel borophene/ecoflex nanocomposite is developed as a promising triboelectric material with tailorability, durability, mechanical stability, and flexibility. The addition of borophene nanosheets enables the borophene/ecoflex nanocomposite to exhibit tunable surface triboelectricity investigated by Kelvin probe force microscopy. The borophene/ecoflex nanocomposite is further fabricated into a fabric‐based triboelectric nanogenerator (B‐TENG) for mechanical energy harvesting, medical assistive system, and wound healing applications. The durability of B‐TENG provides consistent output performance even after severe deformation treatments, such as folding, stretching, twisting, and washing procedures. Moreover, the B‐TENG is integrated into a smart keyboard configuration combined with a robotic system to perform an upper‐limb medical assistive interface. Furthermore, the B‐TENG is also applied as an active gait phase sensing system for instantaneous lower‐limb gait phase visualization. Most importantly, the B‐TENG can be regarded as a self‐powered in vitro electrical stimulation device to conduct continuous wound monitoring and therapy. The as‐designed B‐TENG not only demonstrates great potential for multifunctional self‐powered healthcare sensors, but also for the promising advancements toward wearable medical assistive and therapeutic systems.

Triboelectric Nanogenerators-Based Therapeutic Electrical Stimulation on Skin: from Fundamentals to Advanced Applications

“…Besides, the flexibility of friction layers is especially essential for wounds. Ionic patch, Ecoflex-B, nylon-coated cloth, and leather are all flexible triboelectric materials with excellent surface potential properties and wound compatibility, preventing further harm for wound from the hard friction layers. ,, Select triboelectric materials for wound healing that can provide adequate electrical performance as well as superb flexibility is critical. Besides, it is also possible to enhance the skin comfort of nonflexible materials by incorporating triboelectric materials into textile fabrics .…”

“…Apart from the above-mentioned organogel fibers, a borophene/ecoflex (Ecoflex-B) triboelectric material was developed and fabricated into a fabric-based triboelectric nanogenerator (B-TENG) for wound healing. Improved output performance with increasing borophene concentration, enhanced cell proliferation and migration, and successful wound healing in an animal model can be achieved by the developed B-TENG-based ES, as shown in Figure . As shown in Figure a, carbon fiber (CF) acted as the flexible electrode material in the Ecoflex-B, which was made up of layers of ecoflex, borophene nanosheets (NSs), and CF.…”

A self-powered multifunctional dressing for active infection prevention and accelerated wound healing

“…These recent developments has stirred a lot of interest in using the TENGs as an on-body ES module for delivering therapeutic electrical impulses, particularly for wound healing (16,20,21) and bone regeneration (38). Despite encouraging developments, providing effective ES via TENG is often challenged in terms of the biocompatibility, wearability, conformability, durability, and inadequate functionalities (39)(40)(41)(42). The intensity of the EF generated by wearable TENGs is not sufficient to heal complicated chronic wounds that are often infected with pathogenic bacteria.…”

Low-Pressure CVD Synthesis of Tetragonal Borophene Single-Crystalline Sheets with High Ambient Stability

“…They were proven as van der Waals-like crystals with metallic behaviors by the scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) technique, but their ambient pressure stability was poor after they were peeled off the substrate. Similar to the usual synthesis methods of 2D materials, ultrasonic liquid-phase exfoliation, mechanical exfoliation, and ion implantation methods were also used to prepare borophene nanostructures. − Using these methods, the yield of β-rhombohedral borophene or β-borophene sheets can arrive at the microgram level, but the crystallinity of most products was obviously worse than that of MBE-grown borophene, leading to the obvious deterioration of their electronic and optical properties than theoretical values. Further, chemical vapor deposition (CVD) was employed to fabricate borophene − because the surface morphology and crystalline structure of nanomaterials can be handily regulated by adjusting the CVD growth parameters.…”