Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the leading cause of global mortality, highlighting an urgent need for continuous and dynamic in-home monitoring. Since traditional clinical assessments are inherently intermittent, they often fail to capture the transient early warning signs of acute cardiovascular events. Textile-based nanogenerators emerge as an optimal platform to bridge this monitoring gap, as their intrinsic flexibility, breathability, and self-powered nature enable unobtrusive, continuous physiological tracking. Consequently, this review systematically outlines the recent progress in textile-based nanogenerators tailored for capturing vital physiological signals. In this context, core optimization strategies for performance enhancement are systematically detailed, focusing on balancing the trade-offs among sensing capability, output performance, mechanical durability, and user comfort through material engineering, structural optimization, and advanced textile integration. Furthermore, this review discusses the current challenges facing textile-based nanogenerators and explores how these bottlenecks can be overcome through advanced strategies, including algorithmic synergy, hardware integration, durability optimization, and commercial translation. In summary, this multidisciplinary technology demonstrates significant potential to support personalized preventive cardiology and remote healthcare management.
Developing efficient and stable non-precious metal catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is crucial for addressing global energy challenges. In this work, unlike conventional powder-based composites that rely on polymeric binders, we engineered a binder-free, three-dimensional (3D) self-supported electrocatalyst by directly incorporating cobalt (Co) and nitrogen-rich graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) onto a nickel foam (NF) substrate. Through a facile in situ calcination approach, a series of nitrogen-containing OER electrocatalysts, denoted as CoCN/NF-x (x = 40–100%), were synthesized. The in situ thermal treatment facilitated the possible Co-N coordination or strong electronic interactions between the nitrogen atoms of the g-C3N4 framework and the Co centers. This unique structural design significantly reduces interfacial contact resistance, prevents active site aggregation, and builds a highly conductive architecture. Electrochemical OER tests revealed that the catalyst with 80% Co content (CoCN/NF-80) exhibited superior electrocatalytic activity. At a current density of 10 mA cm−2, it achieved a low overpotential of 263 mV in 1.0 M KOH. Moreover, it showcased a remarkably small Tafel slope of 61 mV dec−1, indicating highly favorable OER kinetics. After a 12 h chronoamperometric test, the overpotential increased by only 11%, and post-test characterizations confirmed a favorable surface reconstruction rather than structural degradation, demonstrating promising stability for extended operations. The synthetic strategy developed here can be extended to the preparation of various electrocatalytic materials, contributing to energy-efficient fabrication and sustainable development goals.
Electrochemical flow capacitors (EFCs) exhibit microsecond-level response times in grid-scale energy storage systems and are capable of simultaneously decoupling power density from energy density. However, the carbon slurries typically employed in EFCs often suffer from poor fluidity, low specific capacity, and suboptimal rate performance, which have collectively impeded their large-scale application. In this work, we synthesized ultrasmall carbon nanodots (CDs) with a rich array of oxygen-containing functional groups on their edge structures through a simple mixed-acid hydrothermal method. Different from conventional EFC slurries based on micrometer-sized activated carbons, this work establishes a size-isolated materials platform in which three CDs share essentially identical surface chemistry but differ only in particle size (20.3, 10.0, and ~3.0 nm), so that the size-dependent interplay among interparticle interactions, collision dynamics, and pseudocapacitive charge storage can be decoupled and quantified by combining DLVO-based theoretical modeling with electrochemical measurements. These CDs were then combined with a KOH electrolyte to produce a carbon slurry that exhibits excellent suspension stability, fluidity, and dispersibility. Owing to the pseudocapacitance contribution from the edge functional groups, the EFC exhibited a high specific capacitance of 583 F/g and a low solution resistance of 0.352 Ω under static conditions. Under flowing conditions, the EFC maintained a high specific capacitance of 486 F/g, with a coulombic efficiency of 98%. These results demonstrate that ultrasmall CDs are a viable active material for EFC slurries.
In this work, large-area tandem laminated double-layer luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) based on blue-emitting and orange-emitting pyrene-derived graphitized carbon quantum dots (CQDs) dispersed in an ethylene–vinyl acetate (EVA) matrix were fabricated and systematically investigated. The optical properties and outdoor photovoltaic performance of the individual LSCs were evaluated and compared with those of the tandem architecture. The orange-emitting LSC exhibited a larger Stokes shift (≈135 nm) than the blue-emitting LSC (≈80 nm), indicating reduced spectral overlap and, consequently, lower self-absorption losses. Outdoor exposure revealed excellent short-term stability for the blue-emitting LSC, whereas the orange-emitting LSC exhibited a progressive decline in photovoltaic performance. The tandem architecture broadened the spectral harvesting range, achieving a maximum optical efficiency of 8.09% and a power conversion efficiency of 0.306% when illuminated from the orange-emitting LSC side. These results highlight tandem integration of spectrally complementary luminescent materials as a promising strategy for broadening solar-spectrum utilization and improving the optical and photovoltaic performance of LSCs, with potential for application in building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPVs).
MXenes have attracted considerable attention as anode materials for sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) because of their metallic conductivity, hydrophilic surfaces, tunable surface terminations, and layered structures. However, pristine MXenes are limited by nanosheet restacking, oxidation instability, heterogeneous surface chemistry, low initial Coulombic efficiency, and insufficient electrode-level ion accessibility. These issues indicate that MXenes should be regarded not simply as standalone active materials but as multifunctional building blocks for composite electrode design. This review discusses recent progress in MXene-based composite anodes for SIBs, focusing on MXene/carbon composites, MXene/metal compound composites, polymer-assisted composites, and three-dimensional structured MXene composites for improving structural stability, interfacial chemistry, and sodium-storage kinetics. We emphasize that composite engineering can reshape sodium storage from diffusion-limited intercalation toward hybrid mechanisms involving interfacial adsorption, pseudocapacitive storage, heterointerface-driven redox reactions, ion desolvation regulation, and solid-electrolyte interphase stabilization. Key practical challenges, including oxidation control, initial Coulombic efficiency, high-mass-loading electrode design, gravimetric–volumetric performance trade-offs, scalable synthesis, and full-cell validation, are also discussed. Finally, we propose future design principles based on integrated materials chemistry, interfacial science, multiscale architecture engineering, and realistic cell-level evaluation for advancing MXene composites toward practical SIB anodes.
