Wearable Electricity Generators Fabricated Utilizing Transparent Electronic Textiles Based on Polyester/Ag Nanowires/Graphene Core–Shell Nanocomposites

TLDR

Wearable triboelectric generators are attractive for self‑powered intelligent systems, but current e‑textiles suffer from low conductivity, stability, and compatibility, limiting their integration into clothing. The authors aim to develop high‑performance, transparent smart e‑textiles using silver nanowire/graphene coatings on commercial fabrics, and to demonstrate wearable electricity‑generating textiles that serve as both electrodes and substrates. They fabricate the e‑textiles via a scalable, environmentally friendly full‑solution process, and integrate them into a glove that harvests finger‑motion mechanical energy thanks to the high compatibility of the smart e‑textiles with clothing. The resulting e‑textiles exhibit stable conductivity below 20 Ω/square, excellent mechanical durability, and generate up to 7 nW/cm² of power in a glove, demonstrating promise for self‑powered wearable electronics.

Abstract

The technological realization of wearable triboelectric generators is attractive because of their promising applications in wearable self-powered intelligent systems. However, the low electrical conductivity, the low electrical stability, and the low compatibility of current electronic textiles (e-textiles) and clothing restrict the comfortable and aesthetic integration of wearable generators into human clothing. Here, we present high-performance, transparent, smart e-textiles that employ commercial textiles coated with silver nanowire/graphene sheets fabricated by using a scalable, environmentally friendly, full-solution process. The smart e-textiles show superb and stable conduction of below 20 Ω/square as well as excellent flexibility, stretchability, foldability, and washability. In addition, wearable electricity-generating textiles, in which the e-textiles act as electrodes as well as wearable substrates, are presented. Because of the high compatibility of smart e-textiles and clothing, the electricity-generating textiles can be easily integrated into a glove to harvest the mechanical energy induced by the motion of the fingers. The effective output power generated by a single generator due to that motion reached as high as 7 nW/cm(2). The successful demonstration of the electricity-generating glove suggests a promising future for polyester/Ag nanowire/graphene core-shell nanocomposite-based smart e-textiles for real wearable electronic systems and self-powered clothing.