Self-Powered Miniaturized Acceleration Sensor Based on Rationally Patterned Electrodes

Acceleration sensors have a wide variety of applications for industrial engineering, biology and navigation. However, passive sensing, narrow detection range, large size, and high manufacturing cost curb their further development. Here, we present a miniaturized acceleration sensor (MAS) with rationally patterned electrodes, based on the single electrode triboelectric mechanism, featuring small size, high accuracy, large detection scale, and environmental friendliness. A stainless-steel ball, as the moving part of the MAS, experiences physical movement that is converted into an electrical signal. Equipped with rationally patterned electrodes, the MAS retains the smallest size and lowest weight compared with the currently reported self-powered acceleration sensors. Benefiting from the voltage-relationship-based direction detection mechanism, eight directions can be identified by one TENG module. Consequently, rotated 22.5° relatively, two TENG modules enable the MAS to detect 16 directions. Moreover, accelerations ranging from 0.1 m/s
²
to 50 m/s
²
can be identified according to the relationship of response time and accelerations in the horizontal direction. The relationship is obtained through the measurements of the sum of output voltages (
V_SOC
) for the four bottom electrodes with varying accelerations. In addition, no distinct decrease of
V_SOC
is observed after continuously operating for 2000 circles, presenting excellent robustness. Hence, this cost-effective and rationally patterned MAS reveals great potential for human machine interaction, VR/AR (virtual/augmented reality), sports training, and smart city.