A Piezoelectric Smart Textile for Energy Harvesting and Wearable Self-Powered Sensors

Abstract

Today’s wearable electronics have dramatically altered our daily lives and created an urgent demand for new and intelligent sensor technologies. As a new energy source, self-powering sensors are currently seen as critically important units for wearable and non-wearable textile–electronic systems. To this aim, this paper presents a smart textile-based piezoelectric energy-autonomous harvester and a self-powered sensor for wearable application, where the sandwich structure of the wearable sensor consists of top and bottom textile conductors, and in between the two textile electrodes there is a piezoelectric PVDF thin film. The generating voltage, current, charge, power, and capacitor charging–discharging behaviour of the device were confirmed using multimeter, oscilloscope, Keithley, etc., analyses. Finally, a piezoelectric-textile sensor was integrated into wearable clothes for breathing detection; a shoe insole for footstep recognition; and it can store energy by tapping, to power electronics, such as a calculator, timer, LED, etc., at a later time. The sensitivity of the sensor was enough for generating voltage from a tiny water droplet. Thus, we can assume raindrops to be utilized as a power-generating source on days when no sun is available to solar cells.