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

Abstract

Interruption of the wound healing process due to pathogenic infection remains a major health care challenge. The existing methods for wound management require power sources that hinder their utilization outside of clinical settings. Here, a next generation of wearable self-powered wound dressing is developed, which can be activated by diverse stimuli from the patient’s body and provide on-demand treatment for both normal and infected wounds. The highly tunable dressing is composed of thermocatalytic bismuth telluride nanoplates (Bi 2 Te 3 NPs) functionalized onto carbon fiber fabric electrodes and triggered by the surrounding temperature difference to controllably generate hydrogen peroxide to effectively inhibit bacterial growth at the wound site. The integrated electrodes are connected to a wearable triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) to provide electrical stimulation for accelerated wound closure by enhancing cellular proliferation, migration, and angiogenesis. The reported self-powered dressing holds great potential in facilitating personalized and user-friendly wound care with improved healing outcomes.

Nanogenerators: A Strong Backing for Human‐Centered Intelligent Self‐Powered Medical Systems

“…More recently, Zhang et al developed a wearable multicomponent drug-loaded electronic microneedle (mD-eMN) system by integrating a flexible TENG with a reshaped metal microneedle loaded with a multicomponent chemical drug (Figure 8c). [118] In the mD-eMN system, TENG realized successful treatment of inflammation sites and the reconstruction of skin function by generating pulsed electrons to promote the absorption of anti-inflammatory drugs in cells rather than promoting drug release. It has been proved that the mD-eMN system can effectively alleviate the healing of psoriasis, diabetic ulcers, and other inflammatory skin wounds, providing a new perspective for the development of a wearable flexible electronic and chemical drug combined platform.…”

Electrical Stimulation for Immunomodulation

“…Although electrical stimulation has been successfully applied for several clinical applications, all of them are based on the utilization of conventional AC or DC sources, which require extracorporeal power supplies to operate. Apart from the power requirement, low portability, high operational risk, and low flexibility of the devices, it necessitates patient hospitalization. , To resolve these constraints, considerable efforts have been made to develop smart platforms based on electroactive materials that have intrinsic electroactive properties, which can alter bioelectric fields and hence promote cell migration, differentiation, and polarization (Table ). Typically, electroactive materials are conductive materials, which act as an assisted bioelectricity conductor by providing a conductive pathway to the cell’s intrinsic bioelectricity. − Owing to their excellent conductivity in the range 10 –2 –10 –4 S/cm, biomaterials based on 3D hydrogels and graphene have emerged as promising candidates for direct electrical stimulation of immune cells. − …”

Dual–Plasticizing Strategy for an Enhanced Performance of Degradable Chitosan-Based Triboelectric Nanogenerators

“…Then, the full–degradation performance and antibacterial properties were evaluated. Although there are many reported CS TNEG works, − the easy preparation method of casting and plasticizing, both outstanding generation performance and mechanical enhancement, and sensitive application of throat sensing and handwriting recognition make the dual–plasticizing strategy bring assistance for the further development of CS TENGs. Overall, this work proposes a flexible, antibacterial, and fully degradable TENG for biodegradable products, which contributes to the wide application of degradable TENG-based sensors.…”