Self-powered forest fire alarm system based on impedance matching effect between triboelectric nanogenerator and thermosensitive sensor

Abstract

Abstract As worldwide forest fire frequently causes a serious threat to forest resources and global climate change, novel early forest fire monitoring and detection technologies are urgently required to explore. Herein, a self-powered forest fire alarm system (FFAS) is proposed by coupling thermosensitive effect and triboelectric effect as an aim of effective forest fire monitoring and detecting. The FFAS is fabricated as a self-powered early forest fire monitoring and detection system by connecting a spherical free-standingmode triboelectric nanogenerator (S-TENG) as power source with polydopamine-modified graphene oxide (P-GO) as thermosensitive sensor and commercial LEDs as alarm. When encountering an open fire or abnormal high temperature the thermosensitive sensor based on P-GO can be in-situ thermally reduced, inducing an obvious transition in electrical resistance. Thus, the output voltage of S-TENG can be tuned by the impedance matching effect between special output characteristics of TENG and working status of thermosensitive sensor, and then can directly light up the LEDs as alarm. Furthermore, the FFAS achieves a low temperature response (160 °C), rapid response time (~3 s), and especially no external power supply. Consequently, the FFAS based on impedance matching effect between TENG and thermosensitive sensor would provide a real-time, rapidly responsive, and self-powered monitoring strategy for the early forest fire warning and detection.