Roy Krittish, Ghosh Sujoy Kumar, Sarkar Utsa, Naskar Sudip, Tofail Syed A M, Mandal Dipankar
Department of Physics, and Bernal Institute, University of Limerick, Limerick, V94 T9PX, Ireland.
Department of Physics and Nanotechnology, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur, Chennai, 603203, India.
Small. 2025 Sep;21(37):e05798. doi: 10.1002/smll.202505798. Epub 2025 Aug 3.
The potential of using pyroelectric effect for thermal energy harvesting in advanced energy conversion systems has remained less explored. This work presents the design of a high-performance, flexible hybrid pyroelectric nanogenerator (PyNG), utilizing poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene): polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) electrode layered over a CdS-reduced graphene oxide (CdS-rGO) nanocomposite embedded in poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) electrospun nanofiber mats. It exhibits pyroelectric coefficient of ≈63 µC/(mK) at ambient temperature of 293 K, the highest reported among PVDF-nanofiber-based pyroelectric devices to date. It demonstrated excellent infrared-triggered thermal energy harvesting performance, generating 2.55 V/0.8 nA under cyclic heating and cooling with a ΔT of 42.5 K. The inclusion of CdS-rGO nanocomposite within the PVDF matrix and the flexible PEDOT:PSS electrodes significantly improved the performance, as further corroborated by density functional theory (DFT) simulations, revealing enhanced molecular-level interactions between PVDF and CdS-rGO. Its utility as a self-powered sensing is demonstrated by integrating in an N-95 face mask, enabling it to sense human respiration activity, offering high sensitivity to thermal fluctuation manifested from real-time respiration rate changes. The proposed PyNG holds great promise to be used as self-powered next-generation wearable sensors for personal health monitoring and the early detection of respiratory illnesses.
在先进的能量转换系统中，利用热释电效应进行热能收集的潜力尚未得到充分探索。这项工作展示了一种高性能、柔性混合热释电纳米发电机（PyNG）的设计，该发电机利用聚（3,4-乙撑二氧噻吩）：聚苯乙烯磺酸盐（PEDOT:PSS）电极层覆盖在嵌入聚偏二氟乙烯（PVDF）电纺纳米纤维垫中的硫化镉-还原氧化石墨烯（CdS-rGO）纳米复合材料上。在293 K的环境温度下，它表现出约63 μC/(mK)的热释电系数，这是迄今为止基于PVDF纳米纤维的热释电器件中报道的最高值。它展示了出色的红外触发热能收集性能，在42.5 K的ΔT循环加热和冷却下产生2.55 V/0.8 nA。PVDF基质中包含CdS-rGO纳米复合材料以及柔性PEDOT:PSS电极显著提高了性能，密度泛函理论（DFT）模拟进一步证实了这一点，揭示了PVDF与CdS-rGO之间增强的分子水平相互作用。通过集成在N-95口罩中展示了其作为自供电传感的效用，使其能够感知人类呼吸活动，对实时呼吸速率变化所表现出的热波动具有高灵敏度。所提出的PyNG有望用作自供电的下一代可穿戴传感器，用于个人健康监测和呼吸系统疾病的早期检测。
