A wide range self-powered flexible pressure sensor based on triboelectric nanogenerator

This work presents a triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG) based wide-range, self-powered flexible pressure sensor. The fabricated TENG can detect wide range of applied pressure from 3.2 to 1176 kPa. By analyzing the open-circuit voltage versus pressure curve, the sensitivity in three pressure regimes, namely low (1-10 kPa), medium-high (10-500 kPa) and ultra-high (>500 kPa) is extracted. The obtained sensitivities for these three pressure regimes are 3.16, 0.023 and 0.031 V•kPa
^-1
, respectively. The origin of such a stable response of TENG at all of 3 pressure regimes lies in the use of real contact area of the interface pair. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time a TENG as self-powered pressure sensor has been characterized over such a wide pressure range covering both low and super high pressures. These results show the potential of TENGs for a wide range of applications such as detecting the pressure in wearables, self-powered e-Skin for sole of humanoid robot to help them walk and stand, and the impact of wave energy.