Self-powered and wireless physiological monitoring system with integrated power supply and sensors

With the increase in people’s concern for personal health, the demand for convenient health monitoring electronics has grown noticeably. Wearable physiological sensors with multi-functionality and continuous power supply are constructed through system-level integration and delicate circuit design for energy management and low-power sensing. Energy harvested from body motion and solar or domestic lighting has great potential in powering wearable electronics, eliminating the need of batteries or plug-in power sources. Triboelectric nanogenerators readily fabricated with digital ink-jet printing display a high-power output of 30.96 mW/cm2 after integration with a flexible thin-film solar cell, which ensures unremitting work of the sensors. The self-powered physiological monitoring system can continuously monitor and wirelessly transmit the electrocardiogram, blood pressure, temperature, and motion parameters of the human in real-time without the need for an external power source, providing the wearer with a reliable monitoring means.