Zinc oxide nanowire-parylene nanocomposite based stretchable piezoelectric nanogenerators for self-powered wearable electronics

Abstract

Sustainable flexible micro power supplies for wearable and mobile electronics is a strategic field in today's energy research, which could offer a viable solution to provide the energy required by microsystems. In this interest, we report a facile, cost-effective and industrially scalable process flow for the fabrication of a high performance stretchable piezoelectric nanogenerator (SNG) on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrate. The present proposed fabrication process is substrate independent. The proof-of-concept is shown by fabricating SNGs on bank cards, free standing PDMS and on silicon substrates. The active layer of the present SNG device is realized by encapsulating ZnO nanowires (NWs), synthesized by hydrothermal method, in parylene C polymer matrix. The SNG devices exhibit excellent performance with peak power density of ∼0.7µW/cm2 under a 13 N vertical compressive force at 5 Hz. The obtained electricity from the SNG is used to drive electronic devices such as liquid crystal displays (LCDs) without employing any storage unit, implying the device significance in the field of consumer electronics.