Organic-inorganic hybrid materials for energy storage and flexible wearable devices

As batteries become more powerful, ensuring their safety and long-term reliability is increasingly important. Conventional liquid batteries can leak or overheat, which limits their use in everyday devices. This Ph.D. thesis focuses on new solid materials that replace flammable liquids with safer, more stable alternatives. By carefully combining flexible plastics with advanced inorganic components, the work demonstrates how energy can be stored efficiently while reducing the risk of battery failure, helping to enable safer energy storage for future technologies. Beyond batteries, the research described in this thesis also addresses the rapid growth of wearable and flexible electronics. A key highlight is the development of a self-powered electronic skin, designed to sense movement and mechanical deformation while generating its own electrical energy from motion. This electronic skin integrates a highly sensitive strain sensor with a small energy-harvesting unit, allowing it to operate without an external power supply. It is lightweight, flexible, waterproof, and mechanically robust, making it well suited for applications such as health monitoring, motion tracking, and intuitive human–machine interfaces. Overall, this work shows how smart material design can resolve challenges in energy storage, as well as bring together sensing and energy harvesting in a single system. By enabling safer batteries and self-powered wearable devices, including electronic skin, the research contributes to the development of greener energy technologies and smarter, more sustainable solutions that can seamlessly integrate into everyday life.