The seamless and adaptive interactions between functional devices and their environment (e.g., the human body) are critical for advancing emerging technologies, e.g., wearable devices, consumer electronics, and human-machine interface. The state-of-the-art technologies, however, require a complex integration of heterogeneous components to interface the environmental, mechanical stimulus, which is ubiquitous and abundant in the above applications. These limitations have severely hampered the advancement and broader utilization of related technologies. Moreover, all existing technologies require a power source, which complicates the system design and limits operation schemes.

In this talk, I will discuss our recent progress in developing self-powered human-integrated nanodevices through the hybrid nanomanufacturing of heterostructured nanodevices. This new class of wearable devices are conformable to human skins and can sustainably perform self-powered, non-invasive functions, e.g., physiological monitoring and gesture recognition, by harvesting the operation power from the human body. Such an operation scheme is fundamentally hinged on the polarization induced current term in Maxwell’s displacement current. This research is expected to have a positive impact and immediate relevance to many societally pervasive areas, e.g., biomedical monitoring, consumer electronics, and intelligent robotics.