Self-powered pressure sensor based on triboelectric nanogenerator

Triboelectric nanogenerators are attracting considerable interest among the scientific community due to their potential applications in the field of energy harvesting and self-powered active sensors for touches, pressures, vibrations, accelerations and other dynamic mechanical motions. Here, we report a new class of triboelectric nanogenerator based on polyvinylidene fluoride and polyvinylpyrrolidone nanofibers. Furthermore, the chapter investigates the potential of this triboelectric nanogenerator for detection and quantification of pressures. For this purpose, the triboelectric nanogenerator is subjected to controlled pressures using the technique of dynamic mechanic analysis. The experimental results reveal that the sensor electric responses increase linearlly under stronger pressures. The pressure sensor has a wide detection range from 0 to 2000 Pa with a high sensitivity of 0.936 nA/Pa for the low-pressure region (˂ 800 Pa). Furthermore, the sensor electric outputs are very stable and exhibit almost no change for repeated applications of the same pressure. The main contributions of this work are the development of a novel triboelectric nanogenerator based on polyvinylidene fluoride and polyvinylpyrrolidone nanofibers and the investigation for its potential use for the detection and quantification of pressures. This work succesfully demonstrated that the developed triboelectric nanogenerator measure dynamic pressures in real time, which has important applications in pressure monitoring, touch screens, and medical devices.