Smart Printed Triboelectric Wearable Sensor with High Performance for Glove-Based Motion Detection

In a world increasingly driven by data, wearable triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) offer a convenient way to monitor and collect information about human body motions. To meet the demands of the large-scale production of wearable TENGs, material selection to realize a high conversion efficiency and simplify the fabrication process remains a challenge. To address these issues, we present a simple-structured wearable printed arc-shaped triboelectric sensor (PATS) for finger motion detection by leveraging inkjet printing technology. In this regard, pressure sensors composed of diverse materials based on dielectric-dielectric and metal-dielectric structures in contact-separation mode were fabricated and compared. Thanks to the unique characteristics of the silver nanoparticle (Ag-NP)-printed layer and silicon rubber (SR), the SR-Ag PATS shows a high peak-to-peak voltage of 14.15 V and a short-circuit current of 0.78 μA. The proposed sensor with the capability of accurately identifying finger motions at various bending angles suggests promising application potential in glove-based human-machine interface (HMI) systems.