Expedient secondary functions of flexible piezoelectrics for biomedical energy harvesting

Abstract

Flexible piezoelectrics realise the conversion between mechanical movements and electrical power by conformally attaching onto curvilinear surfaces, which are promising for energy harvesting of biomedical devices due to their sustainable body movements and/or deformations. Developing secondary functions of flexible piezoelectric energy harvesters is becoming increasingly significant in recent years via aiming at issues that cannot be addressed or mitigated by merely increasing piezoelectric efficiencies. These issues include loose interfacial contact and pucker generation by stretching, power shortage or instability induced by inadequate mechanical energy, and premature function degeneration or failure caused by fatigue fracture after cyclic deformations. Herein, the expedient secondary functions of flexible piezoelectrics to mitigate above issues are reviewed, including stretchability, hybrid energy harvesting, and self-healing. Efforts have been devoted to understanding the state-of-the-art strategies and their mechanisms of achieving secondary functions based on piezoelectric fundamentals. The link between structural characteristic and function performance is unravelled by providing insights into carefully selected progresses. The remaining challenges of developing secondary functions are proposed in the end with corresponding outlooks. The current work hopes to help and inspire future research in this promising field focusing on developing the secondary functions of flexible piezoelectric energy harvesters.