Advances in Smart Sensing and Medical Electronics by Self-Powered Sensors Based on Triboelectric Nanogenerators

Abstract

With the rapid progress of artificial intelligence, humans are moving toward the era of the intelligent connection of all things. Therefore, the demand for sensors is drastically increasing with developing intelligent social applications. Traditional sensors must be triggered by an external power source and the energy consumption is high for equipment that is widely distributed and working intermittently, which is not conducive to developing sustainable green and healthy applications. However, self-powered sensors based on triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG) can autonomously harvest energy from the surrounding environment and convert this energy into electrical energy for storage. Sensors can also be self-powered without an external power supply, which is vital for smart cities, smart homes, smart transportation, environmental monitoring, wearable devices, and bio-medicine. This review mainly summarizes the working mechanism of TENG and the research progress of self-powered sensors based on TENG about the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, human–computer interaction, and intelligent medical fields in recent years.

Triboelectric nanogenerators for smart agriculture

“…[89][90][91][92][93][94][95] TENG has attracted the research interest of many scholars due to its simple structure, high output, low cost, diverse material choices, and ability to harvest low-frequency, distributed, and irregular mechanical energy that is ubiquitous in the environment. 93,[96][97][98][99][100][101][102] Currently, many TENGs have been fabricated to harvest mechanical energy from various sources and applied in different research areas such as wearable devices, [103][104][105][106] selfpowered sensing, [107][108][109][110][111] medical treatment, [112][113][114][115] maritime, [116][117][118] energy harvesting, [119][120][121][122][123] and so on. What is essential is that TENG technology provides a span-new approach to the energy supply of IoT in the new network era.…”

What can AI-TENG do for Low Abundance Biosensing?

“…TENG-based AI devices are useful in advancing biosensing systems, enabling continuous and accurate acquisition of biosignals ( Jiang et al, 2021 ). Analyzing this collected data through AI technology is expected to enhance diagnostic capabilities significantly, thus aiding the development of the next generation of digital biomedicine ( Stuart et al, 2021 ).…”

Self-Powered and Autonomous Vibrational Wake-Up System Based on Triboelectric Nanogenerators and MEMS Switch

“…Thus, the TENG can provide sustainable energy for the low power consumption embedded devices [ 19 , 20 , 21 ]. Meanwhile, the TENG can also be used as an active sensor to monitor the state of the surrounding environment, like wind speed and vibration amplitude and acceleration [ 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 ].…”