Abstract
Flexible electronics devices with tactile perception can sense the mechanical property data of the environment and the human body, and they present a huge potential in the human health system. In particular, the introduction of ultra-flexible and self-powered characteristics to tactile sensors can effectively reduce the problems caused by rigid batteries. Herein, we report a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), mainly consisting of an ultra-flexible polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) film with micro-pyramid-structure and sputtered aluminum electrodes, which achieves highly conformal contact with skin and the self-powered detection of human body motions. The flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film was selected as spacer layer, which made the sensor work in the contact-separation mode and endowed the perfect coupling of triboelectrification and electrostatic induction. Moreover, the controllable and uniform micro-structure PDMS film was fabricated by using the micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) manufacturing process, bringing a good sensitivity and high output performance to the device. The developed TENG can directly convert mechanical energy into electric energy and light up 110 green Light-Emitting Diodes (LEDs). Furthermore, the TENG-based sensor displays good sensitivity (2.54 V/kPa), excellent linearity (R2 = 0.99522) and good stability (over 30,000 cycles). By virtue of the compact size, great electrical properties, and great mechanical properties, the developed sensor can be conformally attached to human skin to monitor joint movements, presenting a promising application in wearable tactile devices. We believe that the ultra-flexible and self-powered tactile TENG-based sensor could have tremendous application in wearable electrons.
Highlights
As an important part of wearable devices and medical care devices, flexible electronics have drawn great attention in various fields, including tactile sensors [1], energy supply devices [2,3] and flexible displays [4]
Fabrication of triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG)-Based Self-Powered Sensor: The 200 nm Al was sputtered on the front of the micro-pyramid-structure PDMS film as both the friction layer and electrode, and the 200 nm Al was sputtered on the back of another micro-pyramid-structure PDMS film as another electrode
The wafer was wet etched by the BOE solution, and the photoresist was removed by the acetone
Summary
As an important part of wearable devices and medical care devices, flexible electronics have drawn great attention in various fields, including tactile sensors [1], energy supply devices [2,3] and flexible displays [4]. The common solution for bring flexibility to piezoelectric materials is to reduce its thickness through chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) technology [16,17] and to prepare the thin films on rigid substrate by the sol-gel method [1,18] Such a PENG cannot satisfy the demand of mechanical sensing due to its poor performance under a large deformation. Hou et al [3] reported on a stretchable triboelectric textile for harvesting multivariant human motion energy Though this novel device presents great electrical output performance and potential applications in monitoring human joint movement, it shows poor conformal contact with human skin and wearable clothes. Combining flexible materials with the contact-separation mode TENG to monitor human body movement and harvest human motion energy is an urgent direction for developing self-powered tactile sensing devices. Due to its potential applications in energy harvesting and self-powered sensing
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