Triboelectric nanogenerators, as a device that converts
mechanical
energy into electrical energy, can respond to external pressure stimuli.
However, most triboelectric sensors can only perform pressure measurements
in a narrow pressure range, which limits their application in multiple
scenarios. Here, we proposed a wide-range triboelectric pressure sensor
based on the difference in Young’s modulus of the materials
and a double-sandwich-structure design. We analyzed the effect of
the structural angle at the material surface on the sensor performance
and obtained an optimal combination of angles for a double-sandwich-structure
sensor. The proposed sensor has outstanding performance including
high sensitivity (249.32 mV/kPa), wide range (0–450 kPa), and
fast response time (26 ms). Meanwhile, the sensor has a quite low
detection limit (8.72 Pa). The designed sensor can be applied not
only to the detection of small physiological signals but also to large
plantar pressure sensing. A human motion recognition system based
on plantar pressure was developed. Moreover, we also designed a convolutional
gated recurrent unit model to recognize four human motions with high
accuracy (99.42%). This work provides a design idea to extend the
range of the triboelectric sensor to meet multiple applications.