Recent Advances in Triboelectric Nanogenerator-Based Health Monitoring

Health monitoring helps prevent, diagnose, and treat diseases, and has been given more and more attention in recent years. Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) are promising for applications in health monitoring due to their myriad of merits including low cost, simple fabrication, light weight, self-powered property, and wide selection of materials. Here, the recent key research achievements in TENG-based health monitoring are comprehensively reviewed. TENGs have been applied to detect not only motion-based health conditions such as pulse and heartbeat but also nonmotion-based health conditions such as CO2 concentration and lactate concentration. The design of device structure, sensing mechanism, device performance, advantages and disadvantages of each kind of TENG-based health monitors are discussed. Based on recent progresses, the existing challenges and future prospects for TENG-based health monitoring are also discussed and summarized.