Sustainable oscillating triboelectric nanogenerator as omnidirectional self-powered impact sensor

摘要

An innovative roly-poly triboelectric nanogenerator (RP-TENG) that can harvest mechanical energy and sense impact as a self-powered sensor was designed. The RP-TENG simply consists of a hemisphere shell with an Al electrode and a base plate with a Cu electrode. When just a single input such as a certain external excitation or impact is applied to the RP-TENG, the hemisphere shell oscillates in any direction, and accordingly, an electrical output is sustainably generated by a triboelectrification and electrostatic induction coupling effect. Furthermore, based on such a harvesting ability, we fabricated RP-TENG for a self-powered impact sensor by constructing meshed Cu cell arrays on a base plate of RP-TENG, which was connected to a circuit. When an impact was applied, the RP-TENG could determine the magnitude and direction of the impact without breaking the material. Finally, we successfully demonstrated that our TENG could be utilized for a real-world impact sensor system.