Spiral Steel Wire Based Fiber-Shaped Stretchable and Tailorable Triboelectric Nanogenerator for Wearable Power Source and Active Gesture Sensor

Abstract Continuous deforming always leads to the performance degradation of a flexible triboelectric nanogenerator due to the Young’s modulus mismatch of different functional layers. In this work, we fabricated a fiber-shaped stretchable and tailorable triboelectric nanogenerator (FST–TENG) based on the geometric construction of a steel wire as electrode and ingenious selection of silicone rubber as triboelectric layer. Owing to the great robustness and continuous conductivity, the FST–TENGs demonstrate high stability, stretchability, and even tailorability. For a single device with ~ 6 cm in length and ~ 3 mm in diameter, the open-circuit voltage of ~ 59.7 V, transferred charge of ~ 23.7 nC, short-circuit current of ~ 2.67 μA and average power of ~ 2.13 μW can be obtained at 2.5 Hz. By knitting several FST–TENGs to be a fabric or a bracelet, it enables to harvest human motion energy and then to drive a wearable electronic device. Finally, it can also be woven on dorsum of glove to monitor the movements of gesture, which can recognize every single finger, different bending angle, and numbers of bent finger by analyzing voltage signals.