Fiber-Based Generator for Wearable Electronics and Mobile Medication

TLDR

Smart garments that monitor physiological and biomechanical signals are essential for personalized healthcare, but they usually require bulky batteries or external power sources. The study aims to develop a smart shirt that harvests energy from body motion to power wearable healthcare sensors. The authors fabricated a metal‑free fiber‑based generator using cotton threads, PTFE suspension, and carbon nanotubes, converting biomechanical motion into electricity via electrostatic effects. The FBG achieved an average power density of ~0.1 µW/cm², enabling a power shirt to activate a wireless body‑temperature sensor, and it also functioned as a self‑powered sensor for quantitative motion detection.

Abstract

Smart garments for monitoring physiological and biomechanical signals of the human body are key sensors for personalized healthcare. However, they typically require bulky battery packs or have to be plugged into an electric plug in order to operate. Thus, a smart shirt that can extract energy from human body motions to run body-worn healthcare sensors is particularly desirable. Here, we demonstrated a metal-free fiber-based generator (FBG) via a simple, cost-effective method by using commodity cotton threads, a polytetrafluoroethylene aqueous suspension, and carbon nanotubes as source materials. The FBGs can convert biomechanical motions/vibration energy into electricity utilizing the electrostatic effect with an average output power density of ∼0.1 μW/cm2 and have been identified as an effective building element for a power shirt to trigger a wireless body temperature sensor system. Furthermore, the FBG was demonstrated as a self-powered active sensor to quantitatively detect human motion.