Self-powered energy harvesting and implantable storage system based on hydrogel-enabled all-solid-state supercapacitor and triboelectric nanogenerator

Abstract

The development of personalized and wearable devices has accelerated the investigation of flexible, biocompatible, and stretchable supercapacitors (SCs), enabling the integration into all-in-one integrated self-charging power packages. However, the most explored polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)-based gel electrolytes cannot well meet the requirements of stretchable and biocompatible SCs, mainly due to their inherently poor stretchable features. Herein, we report a new MXene-based polyacrylamide (PAM) hydrogel with high mechanical stretchability and excellent ionic conductivity. The hydrogel is utilized as the electrolyte of SCs and the electrode of self-powered triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) simultaneously in the integrated self-charging power package. The SC exhibits good biocompatibility, high capacitance, high flexibility, and long-term stability, which is suitable for wearable energy storage devices and implanted electronic device. It can be implanted into rats with high biocompatibility. It has promising for use in portable, wearable, and implantable energy related devices.