MXene-reinforced water insensitive self-healing piezoelectric nanogenerator for ambient and aquatic mechano-pressure sensing

Abstract

The development of soft electronic devices capable of autonomous self-healing (SH) holds immense potential across various endeavours, promising to revolutionize product durability, reliability, and maintenance practices. Despite some progress has been made, underwater stable SH continues to be an active area of research. Herein, SH polymer PDMS-MDI_0.4-TFB_0.6 (SHP) with excellent mechanical property was composited with MXene to investigate the piezoelectric nature under various circumstance. By leveraging MXene into SHP not only improves the material properties of mechanical stress but also permittivity of the elastomer. Thus, MXene incorporated SHP (mSHP) induce high polarized charges under mechanical pressure. The fabrication of mSHP piezoelectric nanogenerator (mSHP-PENG) device via spray coating AgNWs on the surface forms ohmic contact, which facilitate high sensitivity and flexibility. Nevertheless, the generated piezoelectricity (30 V, 4.2 μA: 3 Hz) upon mechanical pressure gives maximum power density of 128 μW/m² indicating that our device can act as a reliable power source for portable electronic gadgets. In addition, SHP with amphiphilic functional groups sustain the original shape even after immerse into water for so long. Taking this into account, our device undergoes effective deformation even at low pressures, thus render to fabricate touch sensitive piezo-switches for both atmospheric and aquatics environments.