Continuous Fabrication of a Highly Integrated, User-Friendly, and Low-Cost Triboelectric Yarn/Fabric for Diverse Sensing Applications

Textile-based triboelectric nanogenerators (t-TENGs) have gained increasing interest for real-time mechanical energy harvesting and biomechanical sensing. However, it is challenging to realize t-TENGs with excellent wearability, integration ability, and sensing performance through a continuous manufacturing process. Here, a triboelectric yarn (YTENG) with a core–shell structure is developed through scalable wet-spinning and braiding technologies using a conductive silver yarn as the core and a wet-spun PVDF yarn as the shell. The fabricated YTENG can deliver a voltage of 35 V and a current of 0.35 μA as well as a relatively high-pressure sensitivity of 0.2 V kPa –1 with a wide working range from 7 to 127 kPa. Owing to good mechanical robustness and flexibility, the YTENG can be easily fabricated into a triboelectric fabric (FTENG) with high air permeability by means of weaving and knitting technologies, which demonstrates the integration diversity of the YTENG. Benefiting from the good sensing performance, the resultant triboelectric yarn and fabric can be used as multifunctional pressure sensors for real-time sitting posture recognition and exercise monitoring. This work provides a cost-effective, continuous, scalable approach for fabricating low-cost one- and two-dimensional t-TENGs and promotes diverse applications of the t-TENGs.