Stretchable, Stable, and Degradable Silk Fibroin Enabled by Mesoscopic Doping for Finger Motion Triggered Color/Transmittance Adjustment

As a kind of biocompatible material with long history, silk fibroin is one of the ideal platforms for on-skin and implantable electronic devices, especially for self-powered systems. In this work, to solve the intrinsic brittleness as well as poor chemical stability of pure silk fibroin film, mesoscopic doping of regenerated silk fibroin is introduced to promote the secondary structure transformation, resulting in huge improvement in mechanical flexibility (similar to 250% stretchable and 1000 bending cycles) and chemical stability (endure 100 degrees C and 3-11 pH). Based on such doped silk film (SF), a flexible, stretchable and fully bioabsorbable triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is developed to harvest biomechanical energy in vitro or in vivo for intelligent wireless communication, for example, such TENG can be attached on the fingers to intelligently control the electrochromic function of rearview mirrors, in which the transmittance can be easily adjusted by changing contact force or area. This robust TENG shows great potential application in intelligent vehicle, smart home and health care systems.

Automated summary

Silk fibroin, a biocompatible material, has been introduced into a flexible, stretchable, and bioabsorbable triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) for applications in intelligent wireless communication, providing a new approach for collecting biomechanical energy.