Electrochemical devices that either generate electrical energy via chemical reactions or trigger reactions with electricity have been explored for a variety of applications. Among them, sensors and energy storage devices attract tremendous research interest in recent years mainly due to the rapidly expanding market of wearable and portable devices for applications in clinical diagnosis, physiological monitoring, environmental detection and robotics etc. With the advancement in nanomaterials and nanotechnology, the performance of electrochemical devices can be largely enhanced within miniaturized device areas. Besides, devices can be fabricated on a variety of flexible substrates in scalable, versatile and cost-effective approaches in conjunction with printing techniques.

Electrochemica...[ Read more ]

Electrochemical devices that either generate electrical energy via chemical reactions or trigger reactions with electricity have been explored for a variety of applications. Among them, sensors and energy storage devices attract tremendous research interest in recent years mainly due to the rapidly expanding market of wearable and portable devices for applications in clinical diagnosis, physiological monitoring, environmental detection and robotics etc. With the advancement in nanomaterials and nanotechnology, the performance of electrochemical devices can be largely enhanced within miniaturized device areas. Besides, devices can be fabricated on a variety of flexible substrates in scalable, versatile and cost-effective approaches in conjunction with printing techniques.

Electrochemical glucose sensors with nanostructures for enzymes immobilization and devices robustness enhancement were fabricated and achieved stable and reliable noninvasive sweat glucose monitoring. The highly improved stability of glucose sensors are extremely desirable for investigation of metabolic activities in physiological systems and the as-developed strategy can also be applied in various noninvasive health sensors.

With the insight into electrochemical performance enhancement with nanostructures, a scalable and printable approach was further explored to construct novel and unique hierarchical nanocoral structures to realize high performance planar supercapacitors, which are considered as attractive candidates to serve as energy storage devices for portable and wearable electronics with high flexibility and desirable operation safety. Excellent versatility on electrode pattern artistic design has also been achieved due to utilization of inkjet printing technique.

Moreover, a monolithically integrated self-powered smart sensor system for gas detection, with energy supplied by fully printable planar supercapacitors and embedded solar cells, was fabricated on plastic substrate with inkjet printing technique as a proof-of-concept. The as-developed printable nanostructured electrochemical devices in conjunction with printable approach for system integration show great potency in fabrication of various wearable integrated self-powered devices for personalized healthcare monitoring applications.