Antibacterial, Antifreezing, Stretchable, and Self-Healing Organohydrogel Electrode Based Triboelectric Nanogenerator for Self-Powered Biomechanical Sensing

Flexible and wearable electronic devices have broad applications in human-machine interaction and personal health monitoring. To meet different application scenarios, in this work, an antibacterial, antifreezing, stretchable, and self-healing organohydrogel-based triboelectric nanogenerator (O-TENG) for biomechanical energy harvesting and self-powered sensing is developed. Through integrating Ag nanoparticles on reduced graphene oxide sheets (Ag@rGO) into poly(vinyl alcohol)-polyacrylamide (PVA-PAAm) dual-network organohydrogel with dynamic borate bonds, denoted as Ag@rGO/PVA-PAAm, the organohydrogel has high conductivity, good stretchability, and antifreezing and self-healing properties. When using Ag@rGO/PVA-PAAm as the electrode layer of O-TENG, it can effectively inhibit Gram-negative bacterium E. coli and Gram-positive bacterium S. aureus while showing high cytocompatibility. With the self-healing and antifreezing property, the fabricated O-TENG has stable output performance under room temperature and low temperature of -30 degrees C, even after Ag@rGO/PVA-PAAm is damaged and self-healed. This O-TENG is demonstrated to harvest mechanical energy and is used as self-powered sensors for recognizing handwriting and wrist motion state. This work provides a new pathway for design and application of multifunctional flexible wearable devices.