Sustainable Energy Generation from Piezoelectric Biomaterial for Noninvasive Physiological Signal Monitoring

Sustainable development of self-powered wearable electronics relies on bioinspired piezoelectric materials which could transduce minute deformation of human skin. In this work, fish-skin-based sustainable energy production is discussed in light of structure-property correlation. The developed energy harvester acts as a sensor that interacts with human body parts to monitor real-time physiological signals. Self-assembled collagen nanofibrils comprising fish skin show stable crystalline structure and possess nonlinear electro-striction effect without any electrical poling treatment. A fish skin-based nanogenerator (FSKNG)/pressure sensor is ultra sensitive (sensitivity similar to 27 mV N-1) and highly durable (over 75 000 cycles) and possesses very fast response time (similar to 4.9 ms). Importantly, in response to the external pressure (similar to 1.8 MPa), FSKNG generates open-circuit voltage, V-oc similar to 2 V, and short circuit current, I-Sc similar to 20 nA, due to inherent piezoelectric effect. The magnitude of the generated power (similar to 0.75 mW m(-2)) turns out to be the working mode of low-power electronics (such as blue light-emitting diodes); therefore, it substitutes the requirement of an external power supply to drive a pressure sensor, as well.