Nanopatterned Textile-Based Wearable Triboelectric Nanogenerator

TLDR

The study presents a fully flexible, foldable nanopatterned wearable triboelectric nanogenerator that delivers high power output and mechanical robustness. The WTNG employs silver‑coated textile and PDMS nanopatterns with ZnO nanorod arrays as active triboelectric layers. The nanopatterned WTNG achieved up to 170 V and 120 µA output, maintained performance over 12 000 cycles, and powered LEDs, an LCD, and a keyless vehicle entry system without external power.

Abstract

Here we report a fully flexible, foldable nanopatterned wearable triboelectric nanogenerator (WTNG) with high power-generating performance and mechanical robustness. Both a silver (Ag)-coated textile and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) nanopatterns based on ZnO nanorod arrays on a Ag-coated textile template were used as active triboelectric materials. A high output voltage and current of about 120 V and 65 μA, respectively, were observed from a nanopatterned PDMS-based WTNG, while an output voltage and current of 30 V and 20 μA were obtained by the non-nanopatterned flat PDMS-based WTNG under the same compressive force of 10 kgf. Furthermore, very high voltage and current outputs with an average value of 170 V and 120 μA, respectively, were obtained from a four-layer-stacked WTNG under the same compressive force. Notably it was found there are no significant differences in the output voltages measured from the multilayer-stacked WTNG over 12 000 cycles, confirming the excellent mechanical durability of WTNGs. Finally, we successfully demonstrated the self-powered operation of light-emitting diodes, a liquid crystal display, and a keyless vehicle entry system only with the output power of our WTNG without any help of external power sources.