Textile-based moisture power generator with dual asymmetric structure and high flexibility for wearable applications

Abstract

Moisture power generator (MEG) that can directly convert energy from environment into available clean electricity is ideally suitable to serve as a power source for portable devices and wearable electronics. However, the current MEG technology is lack of wearable capability and intrinsically associated with complicated fabrication processes, which have severely hindered its practical applications. Herein, we developed a facile process for the fabrication of textile-based moisture power generators (TMEGs) with a high flexibility. The newly-developed TMEGs exhibited a high open-circuit voltage of up to 1.0 V due to the rationally designed dual asymmetric structure to enhance the concentration difference of charge carriers for efficiently driving the diffusion of ions. Owing to its flexibility and superior performance, the TMEG could be used to construct a self-powered smart mask for monitoring of human’s respiration and as an efficient energy device for driving minitype electronics. More importantly, large-scale integration of TMEG units could be easily realized by directly printing electrodes array on 400 cm2 of asymmetric textile with screen-printing method, offering an enhanced electric output. Such integrated devices could be immobilized on a T-shirt as portable power source for supplying sufficient power to drive commercial wearable electronics. Compared to the existing power generation systems, therefore, TMEGs fabricated from such a simple fabrication process with all the aforementioned outstanding achievements hold promise for significant cost reduction, opening up new extensive applications as textile-based self-powered devices and wearable electronics.