Wearable Textile Supercapacitors for Self-Powered Enzyme-Free Smartsensors

Abstract

Wearable energy storage and flexible body biomolecule detection are two key factors for real-time monitoring of human health in a practical environment. It would be rather exciting if one wearable system could be used for carrying out both energy storage and biomolecule detection. Herein, carbon fiber-based NiCoO2 nanosheets coated with nitrogen-doped carbon (CF@NiCoO2@N–C) have been prepared via a simple electrochemical deposition method. Interestingly, being a dual-functional active material, CF@NiCoO2@N–C exhibits excellent behaviors as a supercapacitor and prominent electrocatalytic properties, which can be applied for enzyme-free biosensor. It exhibits outstanding energy storage, high capacitive stability (94% capacitive retention after 10,000 cycles), and pre-eminent flexible ability (95% capacitive retention after 10,000 bending cycles), as well as high sensitivity for enzyme-free glucose detection (592 μA mM–1). Moreover, the CF@NiCoO2@N–C-based wearable supercapacitors would be used as self-powered energy systems for enzyme-free biosensors. Integrating with bluetooth, we have successfully developed a wearable self-powered enzyme-free smartsensor, remotely controlled using a smartphone for health monitoring in a practical environment. From this prospective study, it was found that the design of wearable self-powered smartsensors, demonstrating energy storage and enzyme-free biosensing in one system, provides a promising device for detecting body biomolecules, which has the potential to be implemented in the artificial intelligent fields.

Wearable Supercapacitors, Performance, and Future Trends

“…Besides, for textile-based wearable technologies, another challenge is developing a single textile unit incorporating energy storage and devices together. The achievement of cost-effective all-in-one wearable technologies without compensating the performance of the technologies is a great challenge in this area [87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96]. Some fo the research groups demonstrated the laboratory protoypes in this area and in Figure 1, we summarized these studies.…”

Textile Composite Electrodes for Flexible Batteries and Supercapacitors: Opportunities and Challenges

“…[58] The integration of pouch-type TEESDs with other flexible energyconversion devices, such as solar cells, triboelectric nanogenerators, and biofuel cells could prevent the need to wire TEESDs to a power outlet for recharge. [52,53,[59][60][61] Pu et al reported a self-charging power unit which integrated a textile-based triboelectric nanogenerator and a pouch-type LIB belt; the LIB was fabricated by stacking a Ni cloth-based LiFePO 4 cathode and Li 4 Ti 5 O 12 anode and incorporating a soft Celgard separator. [53] The LIB demonstrated a specific capacity of 81 mAh g −1 , operated for 30 cycles, and could be directly charged via triboelectric nanogenerators.…”

Portable and wearable self-powered systems based on emerging energy harvesting technology

“…For example, a triboelectric signal can be used as a sensing signal to realize pressure sensing 35 . Using energy harvesting technology to provide energy to a sensor module is another way to realize self-powered sensing 36 . For instance, many self-powered systems based on piezoelectric 37 , thermoelectric 38 , wet electricity 39 , and redox electricity 40 have been studied to power sensor modules and realize active sensing.…”