Wearable Triboelectric Nanogenerator with Ground-Coupled Electrode for Biomechanical Energy Harvesting and Sensing

Harvesting biomechanical energy for electricity as well as physiological monitoring is a major development trend for wearable devices. In this article, we report a wearable triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) with a ground-coupled electrode. It has a considerable output performance for harvesting human biomechanical energy and can also be used as a human motion sensor. The reference electrode of this device achieves a lower potential by coupling with the ground to form a coupling capacitor. Such a design can significantly improve the TENG's outputs. A maximum output voltage up to 946 V and a short-circuit current of 36.3 μA are achieved. The quantity of the charge that transfers during one step of an adult walking reaches 419.6 nC, while it is only 100.8 nC for the separate single-electrode-structured device. In addition, using the human body as a natural conductor to connect the reference electrode allows the device to drive the shoelaces with integrated LEDs. Finally, the wearable TENG is able to perform motion monitoring and sensing, such as human gait recognition, step count and movement speed calculation. These show great application prospects of the presented TENG device in wearable electronics.