A Stretchable, Self-Healable Triboelectric Nanogenerator as Electronic Skin for Energy Harvesting and Tactile Sensing.

Xi Han,Ruizeng Luo,Dongjie Jiang,Zhou Li,Yu Cao,Yuan Bai,Xuecheng Qu

doi:10.3390/ma14071689

Abstract

Electronic skin that is deformable, self-healable, and self-powered has high competitiveness for next-generation energy/sense/robotic applications. Herein, we fabricated a stretchable, self-healable triboelectric nanogenerator (SH-TENG) as electronic skin for energy harvesting and tactile sensing. The elongation of SH-TENG can achieve 800% (uniaxial strain) and the SH-TENG can self-heal within 2.5 min. The SH-TENG is based on the single-electrode mode, which is constructed from ion hydrogels with an area of 2 cm × 3 cm, the output of short-circuit transferred charge (Qsc), open-circuit voltage (Voc), and short-circuit current (Isc) reaches ~6 nC, ~22 V, and ~400 nA, and the corresponding output power density is ~2.9 μW × cm−2 when the matching resistance was ~140 MΩ. As a biomechanical energy harvesting device, the SH-TENG also can drive red light-emitting diodes (LEDs) bulbs. Meanwhile, SH-TENG has shown good sensitivity to low-frequency human touch and can be used as an artificial electronic skin for touch/pressure sensing. This work provides a suitable candidate for the material selection of the hydrogel-based self-powered electronic skin.

Highlights

Flexible and wearable electronic devices have attracted much attention because of their potential applications in human health monitoring, intelligent sensing, and human– computer interaction systems [1,2]
The mechanical properties of pure gelatin hydrogels are poor, and its wide range of applications can be achieved by improving the mechanical properties of gelatin-based hydrogels
selfhealable triboelectric nanogenerator (SH-triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs)) exhibits excellent tactile sensing performance and can be used as a self-power electronic skin for tactile sensing

Summary

Introduction

Flexible and wearable electronic devices have attracted much attention because of their potential applications in human health monitoring, intelligent sensing, and human– computer interaction systems [1,2]. Stretchable, self-healable conductive hydrogels have attracted widespread attention in wearable electronics and energy harvesting applications, including smart healthcare devices, electronic skins, stretchable electrodes, flexible sensors, and other wearable electronics [4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. Gelatin has good biocompatibility and degradability [12,13], and does not cause immune response in the human body. These excellent characteristics make it have a good application prospect in the field of biomedicine. The mechanical properties of pure gelatin hydrogels are poor, and its wide range of applications can be achieved by improving the mechanical properties of gelatin-based hydrogels

Methods

Results

Conclusion