Smart textiles for self-powered biomonitoring

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Abstract

Merging electronics with textiles has become an emerging trend since textiles hold magnificent wearing comfort and user-friendliness compared with conventional wearable bioelectronics. Smart textiles can be effectively integrated into our daily wearing to convert on-body biomechanical, biochemical, and body heat energy into electrical signals for long-term, real-time monitoring of physiological states, showing compelling medical and economic benefits. This review summarizes the current progress in self-powered biomonitoring textiles along three pathways: biomechanical, body heat, and biochemical energy conversion. Finally, it also presents promising directions and challenges in the field, as well as insights into future development. This review aims to highlight the frontiers of smart textiles for self-powered biomonitoring, which could contribute to revolutionizing our traditional healthcare into a personalized model.

Graphical Abstract

Self-powered biomonitoring textiles via biomechanical, body heat, and biochemical energy conversion are discussed in this work. Platform technologies, including piezoelectric nanogenerators (PENGs), triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs), and magnetoelastic generators (MEGs) for biomechanical energy conversion, thermoelectric generators (TEGs) for boy heat energy conversion, and biofuel cells (BFCs) for biochemical energy conversion, are systematically introduced and discussed in a textile form. Working in a self-powered manner with greatly improved wearing comfort, the smart biomonitoring textiles pave a compelling road to personalized healthcare.

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