Edible cellulose-based conductive composites for triboelectric nanogenerators and supercapacitors

• DOI: 10.1016/j.nanoen.2023.108168
• Publication Date: 2023-01-05T03:42:13Z
• Authors: Leonardo Lamanna; Giuseppina Pace; Ivan K. Ilic; Pietro Cataldi; Fabrizio Viola; Marco Friuli; Valerio Galli; Christian Demitri; Mario Caironi
• Keywords: Edible oil

Edible electronics will enable systems that can be safely ingested and degraded in the human body after completing their function, such as sensing physiological parameters or biological markers gastrointestinal tract, without risk of retention need recollection. The same are potentially suitable for directly tagging food, monitoring its quality, developing edible soft actuators control abilities. Designing appropriate power sources is critical to turn a vision into real opportunities. We propose electrically conductive composites based on ethylcellulose activated carbon enabling materials energy harvesting storage. Free-standing, phase-separated bi-layered films, insulating at top with low electrical resistivity (∼10 Ω cm) bottom, were produced scalable single-step process. Food additives tune mechanical triboelectrical properties proposed films. demonstrated successful operation electropositive elements organic triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) electrodes fully supercapacitors (SC). TENGs showed ∼60 V peak voltage (root mean square density ∼2.5 μW cm−2 5 Hz), while SC achieved an 3.36 mW h g−1, capacity ∼ 9 mAh stability more than 1000 charge-discharge cycles. These results show combination ethyl cellulose carbon, over mixture, allow on-demand devices generation storage, serving future green scenarios.