Flexible triboelectric 3D touch pad with unit subdivision structure for effective XY positioning and pressure sensing

Touch pad is an important human-machine interface in many information exchange scenarios. The rapid develop of portable or wearable devices and internet of things calls for a self-powered, thin, flexible, efficient and secure tactile mapping solution. Here, we present a triboelectric 3D touch pad with the above advantages. It consists of a multi-channel positioning layer and a single-channel pressure sensing layer both based on the rational design of triboelectric nanogenerator. Specially, the positioning layer is developed as a XY Complementary Subdivision Pattern (XYCSP) to reduce the number of channels as well as the XY crosstalk. With this particular pattern, the near end crosstalk is suppressed to a value of 0.16 without additional shielding. Moreover, it can effectively respond to a contactor with big or small size by regulating successive subdivision of a positioning unit. Based on this optimal design, a trajectory imaging pad and an anti-peek built-in code lock are demonstrated, which has promising potential in universal tactile sensing for motion monitoring, electronic skin, robotics, and human machine interactions.