A fully stretchable textile-based triboelectric nanogenerator for human motion monitoring

Abstract Triboelectric textiles with cost-effectiveness, wearable and manufacturability have indicated their potential applications in energy collection and posture recognition from human motions. Here, we present a fully stretchable textile-based triboelectric nanogenerator (FSTTN), which is developed by interacting between woven units of the silver-coated glass microspheres (GM@Ag)/ rubber electrode and the electrode@rubber triboelectric thread. Owing to the high mix ratio of GM@Ag and the remarkable stretchability of rubber matrix, the fabricated FSTTN (5 cm * 5 cm) produced open-circuit voltage of 7.3 V and short-circuit current of 0.39 μA at 100% strain, meanwhile, produced open-circuit voltage of 138 V and short-circuit current of 2.1 μA under the flapping frequency of 3 Hz, respectively. Considering the excellent output performances, the FSTTN can effectively collect tensile mechanical energy to power the commercial electronics, and easily be installed on the human body to monitor the motion posture. Therefore, this work provides a new approach for promoting the development of stretchable and wearable triboelectric textiles.