Coaxial Spring-Like Stretchable Triboelectric Nanogenerator Toward Personal Healthcare Monitoring

Stretchable triboelectric nanogenerators have attracted increasing interests in the field of Internet of Things and sensor network. Therefore, great efforts have been made to realize the stretchability of electronic devices via elaborated material configurations and ingenious device designs. In this work, a flexible and stretchable TENG is developed with a coaxial spring-like structure. The unique structure allows it to generate electrical energy for different degrees of stretching deformations. Its output demonstrates good response to the strain and frequency of the mechanical deformation. At the same time, it exhibits excellent stability and washability. The TENG can be worn on the human fingers, elbow, and knee to monitor the body activities. Furthermore, a self-powered temperature sensor system is fabricated by integrating the TENG with a temperature sensor to identify the operating ambient temperature in real time. A combination of this flexible and stretchable TENG with body motions and a temperature sensor brings a novel insight into wearable functional electronics and user-friendly health monitoring, which has an important basic research significance and practical application value in biometric systems.