A Portable Triboelectric Nanogenerator for Real-Time Respiration Monitoring

As a reliable indicator of human physiological health, respiratory rate has been utilized in more and more cases for prediction and diagnosis of potential respiratory diseases and the respiratory dysfunction caused by cystic fibrosis. However, compared with smart mobile electronics, traditional clinical respiration monitoring systems is not convenient to work as a household wearable device for real-time respiration monitoring in daily life due to its cumbersome structure, complex operability, and reliance on external power sources. Thus, we propose a wearable wireless respiration sensor based on lateral sliding mode triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) to monitor respiratory rates by sensing the variation of the abdominal circumference. In this paper, we validate the possibility of the device as a respiration monitoring sensor via an established theoretical model and investigate the output performance of the sensor via a series of mechanical tests. Furtherly, the applications of the respiration sensor in different individuals, different breathing rhythms, different active states, and wireless transmission have been verified by a lot of volunteer tests. All the results demonstrate the potential of the proposed wearable sensor as a new alternative for detecting and monitoring real-time respiratory rates with general applicability and sensitivity.