A high-performance textile-based triboelectric nanogenerator manufactured by a novel brush method for self-powered human motion pattern detector

Abstract

Textile-based triboelectric nanogenerator (t-TENG) has attracted widespread attention because it is the most promising technology in the fields of intelligent electronic textiles and biosensors. However, it is still a challenge for t-TENG with high performance and low cost. Herein, we develop a high-performance t-TENG to harvest biomechanical energy from human motions, in which nanopatterned polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) – carbon nanotubes (CNTs) film is coated through a novel brush coating method (PCN-TENG). The open-circuit voltage (VOC) and short-circuit current (ISC) can reach 51.2 V and 3.0 μA, respectively, while the traditional dip-coat method only reaches 14 V and 0.82 μA. Furthermore, the self-powered human motion pattern detector (HMPD) is made, which can collect the energy of human movement and identify the movement status (including: walking, running, and jumping) by inserting PCN-TENG into a pair of insoles insole. HMPD has two working modes, in which mode 1 (the single-electrode mode) is good at recognizing movement mode and mode 2 (vertical contact-separation mode) is more advantageous in collecting movement energy of the human body. In this work, high-performance intelligent electronic textiles were prepared by a novel efficient and convenient method and apply them to t-TENG, which had a high potential for future smart clothing products and self-powered biosensors, and a novel self-powered HMPD had been designed to realize human movement monitoring while collecting energy.