A high-output performance mortise and tenon structure triboelectric nanogenerator for human motion sensing

Abstract

Triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) can generate renewable energy with huge application potential by converting energy that is inaccessible in the environment into usable electricity. The mortise and tenon structure is the primary structural method of ancient Chinese architecture, furniture, and other appliances. It is a very delicate method of connecting two components by combining the concave and convex parts. This structure can bear a large load and can be integrated into multiple forms. By introducing the traditional Chinese mortise and tenon process in the research, we constructed a kind of mortise and tenon structure triboelectric nanogenerator (MT-TENG) using discarded paper and polypropylene (PP) materials. This new structure can achieve high firmness and spatial division. It is proved that the short-circuit current ( Isc ) output of MT-TENG is 1.7 times higher than that of the grid structure triboelectric nanogenerator (G-TENG) under the same space condition. The influence factors of motion amplitude and frequency on its energy harvesting performance have been investigated in the paper. The MT-TENG device can collect human motion's mechanical energy and detect human hands and feet' motion states. The power generated by the MT-TENG with a size of 3 cm × 3 cm can drive 53 LEDs. This paper provides an innovative mortise and tenon structure that can effectively improve the output performance of TENGs，showing great potential in fields such as wearable electronic devices. • The traditional Chinese mortise and tenon architecture is firstly proposed to build a TENG structure. • The mortise and tenon structure TENG has demonstrated a superior output performance over the grid structure TENG. • The MT-TENG can realize energy supply and sensing of human motion patterns.