Abstract
Nanomaterials have gained considerable attention over the last decade, finding applications in emerging fields such as wearable sensors, biomedical care, and implantable electronics. However, these applications require miniaturization operating with extremely low power levels to conveniently sense various signals anytime, anywhere, and show the information in various ways. From this perspective, a crucial field is technologies that can harvest energy from the environment as sustainable, self-sufficient, self-powered sensors. Here we revisit recent advances in various self-powered sensors: optical, chemical, biological, medical, and gas. A timely overview is provided of unconventional nanomaterial sensors operated by self-sufficient energy, focusing on the energy source classification and comparisons of studies including self-powered photovoltaic, piezoelectric, triboelectric, and thermoelectric technology. Integration of these self-operating systems and new applications for neuromorphic sensors are also reviewed. Furthermore, this review discusses opportunities and challenges from self-powered nanomaterial sensors with respect to their energy harvesting principles and sensing applications.
Highlights
Sensors are key ingredients of next-generation electronics in the Internet of Things (IoT) because they contribute to collecting essential signals
The emergence of two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials has ignited considerable interest in their potential, owing to their atomically thin nature [28] and superior electrical and optical characteristics. These 2D nanomaterials, including graphene [29,30], hexagonal boron nitride [31,32], and metal dichalcogenides (MX2 ) [33,34], have a layered structure based on strong in-plane bonds and weak out-of-plane van der Waals
MoS2, and a broad range of 2D materials, including transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD), graphene, and monolayer group-IV and -III monochalcogenides, exhibit excellent piezoelectric effects depending on the piezoelectric nanogenerators (PENG) and triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG) structure [69]
Summary
Sensors are key ingredients of next-generation electronics in the Internet of Things (IoT) because they contribute to collecting essential signals. The emergence of two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials has ignited considerable interest in their potential, owing to their atomically thin nature [28] and superior electrical and optical characteristics. These 2D nanomaterials, including graphene [29,30], hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) [31,32], and metal dichalcogenides (MX2 ) [33,34], have a layered structure based on strong in-plane bonds and weak out-of-plane van der Waals (vdW). The extremely high voltage operation is considered a strong drawback, limiting sensor system miniaturization and wearable applications in conventional 2D nanomaterials–based sensors In this light, the operation of self-powered sensors has rapidly emerged and has received a lot of attention in recent years [43,44,45,46,47].
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