Self-Powered All-in-One Fluid Sensor Textile with Enhanced Triboelectric Effect on All-Immersed Dendritic Liquid–Solid Interface

Abstract

Enormous interests have been attracted on exploiting interfacial triboelectric effects for sensor and energy applications but immensely limited by the inefficient liquid-solid electrification in terms of immersed applications in fluid. Here, we have presented a flexible self-powered all-in-one fluid sensor textile, for simultaneously monitoring the velocity, acceleration, and chemical composition based on an enhanced liquid-solid triboelectric effect. The textile was woven from flexible dendritic cable electrodes surrounded by arrays of micrometal dendrites, which could be further coated with a layer of polytetrafluoroethylene nanofibers. Even when completely immersed in the fluid, the textile can efficiently output a combined electric signal for parsing the velocity, acceleration, and chemical composition information. Furthermore, a textile of 6 cm can charge a commercialized capacitor to 1 V within 80 s by harvesting flow energy on the liquid/solid interface, showing a potential use as the power supply of a signal-processing circuit. It has proposed a promising fluid sensor without extra power cables, for alerting possible leakage or blockage inside chemical and petroleum pipelines.

Smart Textile‐Integrated Microelectronic Systems for Wearable Applications

“…The flowing of fluids nearby the textile could induce charge generation at the liquid/solid interface (Figure e). The induced voltage was influenced by the velocity, acceleration, as well as the chemistry of the flowing liquid, which enabled the textile to be applied for the monitoring of the pipeline leakage and blockage . Ainda et al integrated an e‐textile “valve” into a paper‐based microfluidic system.…”

Progress on wearable triboelectric nanogenerators in shapes of fiber, yarn, and textile

“…In general, there are two routes to achieve the textile TENGs, the first one is fabricating the TENGs based on yarns, threads, and belts, followed by weaving those units into textile devices to improve the applicability [67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85]. The second way is realizing TENGs by in situ functionalization directly on the off-the-shelf textiles that were woven by synthetic or natural fibers/yarns [86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100]. In the following section, we summarize the progress on textile TENGs that were realized by the two routes and compare their advantages and disadvantages in materials, processing, and performances.…”

“…These concerns could be addressed by the second route of in situ functional finishing. A lot of work has been carried out by coating various triboelectric materials and conductive materials on the textiles, there is no limitation on the dimension of textile, promising the scalable process for self-powered wearable systems [86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100]. In the following section, we summarize the progress on triboelectric textiles fabricated by in situ functional finishing, such as various coating methods, deposition, reactive ion etching (RIE), and chemical modification, and we compare the advantages of different processes on the comprehensive properties of textile TENGs, including the triboelectric output, washability, durability, and comfort level as well as wearability.…”

“…Besides the energy harvesting from water flows and droplets, waterproof textiles with triboelectric effect could serve as self-powered sensor in a fully immersed condition. Recently, Fan et al reported a flexible self-powered all-in-one fluid sensor textile using interfacial triboelectric effect of arrays of a kind of micrometal dendrites (Figure 7(c)) [95]. PTFE nanofibers were coated on the dendritic cable electrodes to further enhance the triboelectric response.…”

A Motion-Balanced Sensor Based on the Triboelectricity of Nano-Iron Suspension and Flexible Polymer

“…Due to the fluidity of the liquid, the contact area between the liquid and the solid polymer is larger than that between the two solid polymers. Water [11,12], deionized water [13], and NaCl solutions are used for liquid-solid triboelectric generators to harvest energy from river or sea and triboelectric sensors also can measure ion concentration [14] or the flowing water velocity, position, reaction temperature, ethanol, and salt concentrations [9].…”