Tribo-Induced Color Tuner toward Smart Lighting and Self-Powered Wireless Sensing

The color-tuning capability of solid-state lighting (SSL) systems are highly demanded for smart lighting according to the environmental conditions, as well as wireless sensing of the environmental information. In the meanwhile, state-of-the-art triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG)-based sensing systems rely on bulky and expensive devices, which require cable connections and additional power consumptions. This work aims at solving these challenges, through developing a tribo-induced color tuner that can be integrated into the vastly distributed commercial SSL system. This tribo-induced color tuner includes a concentric color conversion plate consisting of (Sr,Ca)AlSiN₃:Eu phosphor and TiO₂, a tribo-induced liquid lens, and a rotary freestanding sliding TENG. The color oscillation between purple and pink is achieved upon the tribo-charging by the TENG, which reveals the input mechanical motion signals. The signal can be conveniently sent by everywhere-existed lamps and processed by everyone-owned smartphone cameras or closed-circuit televisions. Through this approach, the function of wireless sensing is achieved without the need of preamplification, with no additional power supply required, as demonstrated for wireless sensing of the rotation speed. The smart lighting for underwater photographing is also demonstrated by the color-tunable SSL system with the best imaging quality achieved.