Biocompatible and biodegradable triboelectric nanogenerators based on hyaluronic acid hydrogel film

Biocompatible, biodegradable, and implantable energy generation materials are expected to play important roles in the use of transient self-powered systems in tissue engineering and other biomedical applications. In particular, hyaluronic acid (HA) derived from mammals has attracted considerable attention because of its biocompatibility, biodegradability, and tissue regenerating and wound healing abilities. Nevertheless, there has been little effort to utilize HA as the core material for energy generation. This study developed a simple but efficient method to prepare pure and cross-linked HA hydrogel films by solvent evaporation, and fabricate biocompatible, biodegradable, and high-performance triboelectric nanogenerators based on the HA hydrogel film (HA-TENGs). The peak-to-peak voltage and current outputs of these HA-TENGs reached ~ 20 V and ~ 0.4 μA, respectively. Such power output was sufficient to light up several blue LEDs connected in series. The HA hydrogel film as a TENG material showed only minor degradation after long-term use. Furthermore, these HA hydrogel films exhibited no cytotoxicity at least within one day and even promoted the proliferation of MC3T3-E1 cells. Therefore, this method can be a powerful strategy to fabricate high-performance biocompatible, biodegradable energy devices for a range of practical tissue engineering and other biomedical applications in the future.