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 electrostriction effect without any electrical poling treatment. A fish-skin-based nanogenerator (FSKNG)/pressure sensor is ultrasensitive (sensitivity ∼27 mV N –1 ) and highly durable (over 75 000 cycles) and possesses very fast response time (∼4.9 ms). Importantly, in response to the external pressure (∼1.8 MPa), FSKNG generates open-circuit voltage, V oc ∼ 2 V, and short-circuit current, I sc ∼ 20 nA, due to inherent piezoelectric effect. The magnitude of the generated power (∼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.