Printable Fabrication of a Fully Integrated and Self-Powered Sensor System on Plastic Substrates

Wearable and portable devices with desirable flexibility, operational safety, and long cruising time, are in urgent demand for applications in wireless communications, multifunctional entertainments, personal healthcare monitoring, etc. Herein, a monolithically integrated self-powered smart sensor system with printed interconnects, printed gas sensor for ethanol and acetone detection, and printable supercapacitors and embedded solar cells as energy sources, is successfully demonstrated in a wearable wristband fashion by utilizing inkjet printing as a proof-of-concept. In such a "wearable wristband", the harvested solar energy can either directly drive the sensor and power up a light-emitting diode as a warning signal, or can be stored in the supercapacitors in a standby mode, and the energy released from supercapacitors can compensate the intermittency of light illumination. To the best of our knowledge, the demonstration of such a self-powered sensor system integrated onto a single piece of flexible substrate in a printable and additive manner has not previously been reported. Particularly, the printable supercapacitors deliver an areal capacitance of 12.9 mF cm(-2) and the printed SnO2 gas sensor shows remarkable detection sensitivity under room temperature. The printable strategies for device fabrication and system integration developed here show great potency for scalable and facile fabrication of a variety of wearable devices.