Multi-mode and durable fiber triboelectric nanogenerator for power and sensor enabled by Hookean vascular stent structure

Abstract

Fiber-sharped triboelectric nanogenerators (F-TENGs) play an important role in distributed energy harvest resources for E-textiles and IoT. Most of the current F-TENGs work in single mode with low power densities. On the contrary, multi-mode has been verified to be an effective way to enhance the energy output of F-TENGs. However, the working mechanisms of multi-mode F-TENGs are not clear yet. In this work, a novel vascular stent-like F-TENG is proposed and two working modes are demonstrated, which can be realized single-electrode mode and contact separation mode accumulation in one motion and lead to a higher electric output. The voltage of the dual-mode reaches 9 V cm−1 under 1 Hz, which is 3 times the value of single-electrode mode, and 2 times the value of vertical contact-separation mode. In addition, the F-TENG shows excellent durable stability after 10,000 cycles. Furthermore, the F-TENG has been successfully applied as an intelligent shoe pad for human walking monitoring. This vascular stent-like F-TENG, owning to its high energy generation performance and easy mass-scale fabrication, is promising and able to extend the application of textile-based electronics.