Self-powered textile for wearable electronics by hybridizing fiber-shaped nanogenerators, solar cells, and supercapacitors

Zhen Wen; Min-Hsin Yeh; Hengyu Guo; Jie Wang; Yunlong Zi; Weidong Xu; Jianan Deng; Lei Zhu; Xin Wang; Chenguo Hu; Liping Zhu; Xuhui Sun; Zhong Lin Wang

doi:10.1126/sciadv.1600097

Self-powered textile for wearable electronics by hybridizing fiber-shaped nanogenerators, solar cells, and supercapacitors

Sci Adv. 2016 Oct 26;2(10):e1600097. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1600097. eCollection 2016 Oct.

Authors

Zhen Wen¹, Min-Hsin Yeh², Hengyu Guo³, Jie Wang⁴, Yunlong Zi⁴, Weidong Xu⁵, Jianan Deng⁴, Lei Zhu⁶, Xin Wang⁴, Chenguo Hu⁷, Liping Zhu⁸, Xuhui Sun⁵, Zhong Lin Wang⁹

Affiliations

¹ School of Material Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332-0245, USA.; State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Cyrus Tang Center for Sensor Materials and Applications, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.; Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Carbon-Based Functional Materials and Devices, Institute of Functional Nano and Soft Materials, Soochow University, Suzhou, Jiangsu 215123, China.
² School of Material Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332-0245, USA.; Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei 10607, Taiwan.
³ School of Material Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332-0245, USA.; Department of Applied Physics, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044, China.
⁴ School of Material Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332-0245, USA.
⁵ Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Carbon-Based Functional Materials and Devices, Institute of Functional Nano and Soft Materials, Soochow University, Suzhou, Jiangsu 215123, China.
⁶ School of Material Science and Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, Jiangsu 221116, China.
⁷ Department of Applied Physics, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044, China.
⁸ State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Cyrus Tang Center for Sensor Materials and Applications, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
⁹ School of Material Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332-0245, USA.; Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems, Chinese Academy of Sciences; National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, Beijing 100083, China.

Abstract

Wearable electronics fabricated on lightweight and flexible substrate are believed to have great potential for portable devices, but their applications are limited by the life span of their batteries. We propose a hybridized self-charging power textile system with the aim of simultaneously collecting outdoor sunshine and random body motion energies and then storing them in an energy storage unit. Both of the harvested energies can be easily converted into electricity by using fiber-shaped dye-sensitized solar cells (for solar energy) and fiber-shaped triboelectric nanogenerators (for random body motion energy) and then further stored as chemical energy in fiber-shaped supercapacitors. Because of the all-fiber-shaped structure of the entire system, our proposed hybridized self-charging textile system can be easily woven into electronic textiles to fabricate smart clothes to sustainably operate mobile or wearable electronics.

Keywords: Dye-sensitized solar cell; fiber; self-charging power system; supercapacitor; triboelectric nanogenerator; wearable electronics.