Transparent and stretchable triboelectric nanogenerator for self-powered tactile sensing

By Gengrui Zhao, Yawen Zhang, Nan Shi, Zhirong Liu, Xiaodi Zhang, Mengqi Wu, Caofeng Pan, Hongliang Liu, Linlin Li, Zhong Lin Wang. Nano Energy, 2019

321 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Wearable electronic devices have attracted numerous attention in tactile sensing, motion detecting, and biomedical signal monitoring. In particular, a wearable and self-powered sensor combining all the merits of sensitivity, transparency, stretchability, and flexibility is highly demanded to adapt human skins. Herein, we report a fully transparent, highly stretchable, and self-powered contact-separation triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) as a tactile sensor. The TENG consists of a double-network ionogel with the transparency, stretchability, and conductivity as the electrode and one friction layer, and patterned polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) as another friction layer. The fabricated sensor reaches a maximum sensitivity of 1.76 V N−1 when detecting impacting forces in the range of 0.1–1 N. Meanwhile, with good stretchability of the sensor, the triboelectric signals maintain a good linearity with impacting forces at different tensile ratios (0%, 10%, 50%, and 80% strain). These properties enable the sensor to be capable of monitoring a variety of human activities, including finger touching and bending, breathing, and pulse beating. We believe such a transparent, stretchable and self-powered tactile TENG sensor has tremendous application potential in wearable and soft electronics.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Cognitive Neuroscience, Polymers and Plastics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8e5ab6500ea2265f34d606814b1db32e94c6f733