Structural Design of Ion-Gel Based Triboelectric Nanogenerators for Self-Powered Motion Detection

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have emerged as a promising avenue for advancing the field of mechanical motion monitoring without an external power. The persistent obstacle resides in the requirement for accurate monitoring of the motion frequency with superior sensitivity. The influence of the shape and dimension of the surface microstructure on the output performance of TENGs has been thoroughly investigated by numerical simulations under different motion frequencies. The simulation results indicate that the maximum output power of the ion-gel based TENG increases as the motion frequency rises, while there is an opposite tendency for the equivalent internal resistance with frequency. The theoretical peak output power demonstrates an increase by more than 20-fold from 0.57 µW to 11.78 µW utilizing optimized structural design. Furthermore, the sensitivity of output power to motion frequency for the TENG with pyramid patterns can reach 7.26 µW/Hz, which is approximately 5.6 times greater than that of a TENG without any microstructures. Finally, ion-gel based TENGs with optimized device structure have been integrated with indium oxide based thin-film transistors to realize self-powered tactile sensors for wearable intelligent motion monitoring.