Recent progress of fiber-based transistors: materials, structures and applications

Wearable electronics on fibers or fabrics assembled with electronic functions provide a platform for sensors,displays,circuitry,and computation.These new conceptual devices are human-friendly and programmable,which makes them indis-pensable for modern electronics.Their unique properties such as being adaptable in daily life,as well as being lightweight and flexible,have enabled many promising applications in robotics,healthcare,and the Internet of Things(IoT).Transistors,one of the fundamental blocks in electronic systems,allow for signal processing and computing.Therefore,study leading to integration of transistors with fabrics has become intensive.Here,several aspects of fiber-based transistors are addressed,including materials,system structures,and their functional devices such as sensory,logical circuitry,memory devices as well as neuromorphic computation.Recently reported advances in development and challenges to realizing fully integrated electronic textile(e-textile)systems are also discussed.

Two-dimensional layered architecture constructing energy and phonon blocks for enhancing thermoelectric performance of InSb

InSb is a narrow-bandgap semiconductor with a zinc blende structure and has been wildly applied in photodetectors, infrared thermal imaging, and Hall devices. The facts of decent band structure, ultrahigh electron mobility,and nontoxic nature indicate that InSb may be a potential mid-temperature thermoelectric material. The critical challenges of InSb, such as high thermal conductivity and small Seebeck coefficient, have induced its ultrahigh lattice thermal conductivity, and thus low ZT values. In view of this, we have developed a competitive strategy typified by the cost-efficient nanocompositing of z wt% QSe_(2)(Q = Sn, W). Specifically, the Q_(In)^(+) and Se_(Sb)^(+) point defects were introduced in the In Sb system by nanocompositing the vested two-dimensional layered QSe_(2). In addition, the enlarged valence band maximum of intrinsic WSe_(2)acted as ladders can scatter a fair number of hole carriers, resulting in the relatively enhanced Seebeck coefficient of high temperature. Moreover, the disorderly distributed nanosheets/particles, and dislocations acting as obstacles can effectively delay the heat flow diffusion, inducing the strong scattering of thermal phonons. Consequently, an enhanced power factor of ~33.3 μW cm^(-1)K^(-2) and ZT value of~0.82 at 733 K have been achieved in the 3% WSe_(2)sample,companied with the engineering output power density ω_(max)~233 μW cm^(-1) and thermoelectric conversion efficiency η~5.2%. This artificially designed approach indicated by suited nanocompositing can integrate several engineering strategies such as point defects, nanoengineering, and energy filtering into one, providing a reference to optimize the thermoelectric performance of other thermoelectric systems.