A Stretchable, Flexible Triboelectric Nanogenerator for Self-Powered Real-Time Motion Monitoring

Stretchable triboelectric nanogenerators have attracted increasing interests in the field of wearable electronics. In this work, a stretchable and flexible triboelectric nanogenerator (SF-TENG) with a ladder structure that consists of several single-electrode TENG units on the elastic rubber substrate is developed. The structural design of the ladder-shaped SF-TENG is found to greatly improve the mechanical flexibility and stretching ability under small external force, and it works well even under the elongation of 120% and curvature of 90 degrees. The SF-TENG with optimized structure can have excellent linear response to tensile force and act as a strain sensor. The sensitivities of output voltage to tensile force and tensile displacement can reach 2.01 V N-1 and 0.0412 V mm(-1), respectively. Moreover, a SF-TENG-based data glove is fabricated to demonstrate the potential application of such TENG in the human-machine interaction through the stone-paper-scissors game.