Blow-driven triboelectric nanogenerator as an active alcohol breath analyzer

Gas sensing is an important technology that is widely used in life science, security and environmental protection. In this work, we introduced a fundamentally new working principle in the gas sensing field by fabricating a blow-driven triboelectric nanogenerator (BD-TENG). By using the electricity generated via mouth blowing, the induced voltage across the sensor holds a proportional relationship with the breathed-out alcohol concentration regardless the blow speed and quality air-flow. The as-developed BD-TENG, acting as an active alcohol breath analyzer, is featured as high detection gas response of 34 under an optimized sensor working temperature, fast response time of 11 s as well as a fast recovery of 20 s. Moreover, the device shows outstanding capability of selectivity anti-interference for alcohol detection. In addition, fabricated of common polymer materials, the reported breath analyzer is still light-weight and cost-effective. The BD-TENG based alcohol detector not only presents a new principle in the field of gas sensing, but also greatly advances the applicability of TENGs as self-powered active sensors. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.