A smart mechanical‐energy harvesting and self‐heating textile device for photo‐thermal energy utilization

Abstract

Abstract A smart textile that could harvest mechanical‐energy for photo‐thermal energy utilization facilitates the development of a flexible self‐heating wearable device. This study presents novel triboelectric materials with a dynamic‐bond‐cross‐linking azobenzene‐based polymer (PAzo‐M) with diverse metal ions. The flexible nylon fabric coated with PAzo‐M (NF@PAzo‐M) serves as a friction layer of the photothermal triboelectric nanogenerator (PT‐TENG) to harvest human mechanical energy. The prepared PT‐TENG could exhibit a maximum open‐circuit voltage of up to 188.8 V with excellent electron loss capability because of its minimum vertical electron affinity of internal ion. And it can harvest mechanical energy from human motion (0.5–1 Hz) to drive the self‐powering irradiation of ultraviolet light or visible light, leading to the reversible isomerization of NF@PAzo‐M. The NF@PAzo‐M textile cyclically utilizes photo‐thermal energy for self‐heating. These results suggest new opportunities to harvest human mechanical energy for self‐powering multifunctional wearable devices for functions.

Keywords

• mechanical‐energy harvesting
• photo‐thermal
• self‐heating
• self‐powering
• wearable