Interruption of the wound healing process due to pathogenic infection remains a major healthcare challenge. The existing methods for wound management require power sources which hinders their utilization outside of clinical settings. Here, a next generation of self-powered wound dressing with wearable capability is developed that can be activated by diverse stimuli from the body motions and provide on-demand treatment for both normal and infected wounds. The highly tunable dressing is composed of thermocatalytic bismuth telluride nanoplates (Bi2Te3 NPs) functionalized onto carbon fiber fabric electrodes and triggered by the surrounding temperature difference to controllably generate hydrogen peroxide to effectively inhibit bacterial growth at the wound site. The integrated electrodes are connected to a wearable triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) to provide electrical stimulation for accelerated wound closure by enhancing cellular proliferation, migration and angiogenesis. The reported self-powered dressing holds great potential in facilitating personalized and user-friendly wound care with improved healing outcomes.

KEYWORDS: Smart dressing, self-powered system, wound healing, infection prevention




[1] S. R. Barman, S.-W. Chan, F.-C. Kao, H.-Y. Ho, I. Khan, A. Pal, C.-C. Huang, Z.-H. Lin* (2023) “A Self-powered Multifunctional Dressing for Active Infection Prevention and Accelerated Wound Healing” Sci. Adv., 9, eadc8758.

[2] Y.-J. Lin†, I. Khan†, S. Saha, C.-C. Wu, S. R. Barman, F.-C. Kao, Z.-H. Lin* (2021) “Thermocatalytic Hydrogen Peroxide Generation and Environmental Disinfection by Bi2Te3 Nanoplates” Nat. Commun., 12, 180 (Editor’s Highlight).