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Hybrid photovoltaics (HPVs) incorporating both organic and inorganic semiconducting materials have attracted much attention as next-generation photovoltaics because of their advantage of combining both materials. The hybridization of ZnO nanowires (NWs) and organic semiconductors is expected to be a suitable approach to overcome the limited exciton diffusion length and low electron mobility associated with current organic photovoltaics. The use of ZnO NWs allows researchers to tune nanoscale dimensions more precisely and to achieve rod-to-rod spacing below 10 nm. However, the perfect incorporation of organic semiconductors into densely packed ZnO NW arrays has yet to be achieved. In this study, we report the fabrication of ZnO NW arrays and various organic heterojunction-based HPVs using the feasible and effective vacuum-assisted double coating (VADC) method, achieving full coverage of the organic semiconductors on the compact ZnO NW arrays. The newly proposed VADC method ensures perfect infiltration and full coverage of the organic semiconductors on the densely packed NW arrays. Compared with the conventional single spin-coating process, the use of the VADC method led to 11 and 14% increases in the power conversion efficiency of P3HT:PCBM- and PBDTTT-C-T:PC71BM-based HPVs, respectively. Our studies provide a feasible method for the fabrication of efficient HPVs.

Printed electronics are attractive due to their low-cost and large-area processing features, which have been successfully extended to magnetoresistive sensors and devices. Here, we introduce and characterize a new kind of magnetoresistive paste based on the anisotropic magnetoresistive (AMR) effect. The paste is a composite of 100-nm-thick permalloy/tantalum flakes embedded in an elastomer matrix, which promotes the formation of appropriately conductive percolation networks. Sensors printed with this paste showed stable magnetoresistive properties upon mechanical bending. The AMR value of this sensor is $$0.34\%$$ 0.34 % in the field of 400 mT. Still, the response is stable and allows to resolve sub-mT field steps. When printed on ultra-thin 2.5-$$\upmu \hbox {m}$$ μ m -thick Mylar foil, the sensor can be completely folded without losing magnetoresistive performance and mechanically withstand $$20\, \upmu {\hbox {m}}$$ 20 μ m bending radius. The developed compliant printed AMR sensor would be attractive to implement on curved and/or dynamic bendable surfaces for on-skin applications and interactive printed electronics.

Origami utilizes orchestrated transformation of soft 2D structures into complex 3D architectures, mimicking shapes and functions found in nature. In contrast to origami in nature, synthetic origami lacks the ability to monitor the environment and correspondingly adjust its behavior. Here, magnetic origami actuators with capabilities to sense their orientation and displacement as well as detect their own magnetization state and readiness for supervised folding are designed, fabricated, and demonstrated. These origami actuators integrate photothermal heating and magnetic actuation by using composite thin films (≈60 µm thick) of shape-memory polymers with embedded magnetic NdFeB microparticles. Mechanically compliant magnetic field sensors, known as magnetosensitive electronic skins, are laminated on the surface of the soft actuators. These ultrathin actuators accomplish sequential folding and recovery, with hinge locations programmed on the fly. Endowing mechanically active smart materials with cognition is an important step toward realizing intelligent, stimuli-responsive structures.

Highly compliant electronics, naturally conforming to human skin, represent a paradigm shift in the interplay with the surroundings. Solution-processable printing technologies are yet to be developed to comply with requirements to mechanical conformability of on-skin appliances. Here, it is demonstrated that high-performance spintronic elements can be printed on ultrathin 3 µm thick polymeric foils enabling the mechanically imperceptible printed magnetoelectronics, which can adapt to the periodic buckling surface to be biaxially stretched over 100%. They constitute the first example of printed and stretchable giant magnetoresistive sensors, revealing 2 orders of magnitude improvements in mechanical stability and sensitivity at small magnetic fields, compared to the state-of-the-art printed magnetoelectronics. The key enabler of this performance enhancement is the use of elastomeric triblock copolymers as a binder for the magnetosensitive paste. Even when bent to a radius of 16 µm, the sensors printed on ultrathin foils remain intact and possess unmatched sensitivity for printed magnetoelectronics of 3 T-1 in a low magnetic field of 0.88 mT. The compliant printed sensors can be used as components of on-skin interactive electronics as it is demonstrated with a touchless control of virtual objects including zooming in and out of interactive maps and scrolling through electronic documents.

Since the conventional fluorine-based electro-active polymers release toxic residues into the environment during their syntheses and decomposition processes, eco-friendly piezoelectric polymers are urgently demanded in the field of energy-related soft materials. Here, we derive a high-performance biodegradable chitin polymer from squid pen material and demonstrate its utility as a flexible piezoelectric material. The readily controlled ferroelectric chitin film confers excellent piezoelectricity under external mechanical pressure, resulting in comparable performance with that of conventional fluorine-based piezoelectric polymers. In particular, the sufficient piezoelectric behavior in chitin film allows us to not only realize a high-fidelity paper-type speaker and microphone that operates over a wide frequency range without significantly deteriorating the input and output sounds but also demonstrate transparent speaker consisting of AgNWs electrodes onto freestanding chitin film which also enables to resemble the original sound. Finally, the biodegradable chitin polymer can be successfully dissolved by chitinase enzyme within eight days without any toxic residues remained.

The development of flexible photodetectors has received great attention for future optoelectronic applications including flexible image sensors, biomedical imaging, and smart, wearable systems. Previously, omnidirectional photodetectors were only achievable by integration of a hemispherical microlens assembly on multiple photodetectors. Herein, a hierarchical photodiode design of ZnO nanowires (NWs) on honeycomb-structured Si (H-Si) membranes is demonstrated to exhibit excellent omnidirectional light-absorption ability and thus maintain high photocurrents over broad spectral ranges (365 to 1,100 nm) for wide incident angles (0° to 70°), which enabled broadband omnidirectional light detection in flexible photodetectors. Furthermore, the stress-relieving honeycomb pattern within the photodiode micromembranes provided photodetectors with excellent mechanical flexibility (10% decrease in photocurrent at a bending radius of 3 mm) and durability (minimal change in photocurrent over 10,000 bending cycles). When employed in semiconductor thin films, the hierarchical NW/honeycomb heterostructure design acts as an efficient platform for various optoelectronic devices requiring mechanical flexibility and broadband omnidirectional light detection.