A Highly Stretchable Fiber-Based Triboelectric Nanogenerator for Self-Powered Wearable Electronics

© 2016 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim wileyonlinelibrary.com (1 of 8) 1604378 multidisciplinary fields.[1,2] As a result, stretchable devices, such as lithium-ion batteries,[3] organic light-emitting diodes,[4] electrochemical supercapacitors,[5] fieldeffect transistors,[6] and artificial skin sensors[7,8] have been widely studied. This new class of electronics allows devices to be deformed into complex shapes while maintaining the device performance and reliability, which enable the wearability of the electronics. However, for powering these wearable electronics, energy storage units including batteries or supercapacitors are usually utilized, which have limited lifetime. To provide a sustainable power supply, nanogenerators have been developed to harvest energy from the ambient environment. Among various approaches, triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG)[9] is a newly developed energy-harvesting technology that converts mechanical energy, especially the low-frequency body motion energy,[10] into electric power based on triboelectrification and electrostatic induction, which is promising for applications both in scavenging small-scale mechanical energy and large-scale energy generation, due to its cost-effectiveness, high efficiency, environmental friendliness, and universal availability.[11,12] Previously, attempts have been made to fabricate stretchable TENG for potential applications in self-powered systems.[13–16] For example, Yang et al. have developed the fabrication of a stretchable TENG using serpentine-patterned electrodes and a wavy-structured Kapton film, which can achieve a maximum tensile strain of 22%.[14] Although these flexible TENGs are stretchable with good performance, the endured tensile strain is limited and the deformable ability is constrained due to the conventional planar structure design, which limits applications with large stretching deformations. Recently, fiber-based stretchable electrical devices have emerged as next-generation functional devices in place of the conventional stretchable devices.[17–19] Compared with their planar counterparts, the fiber-based electric device enables not only excellent stretchability but also promising advantages such as being easily engineered and scaled up for various applications. Herein we have, for the first time, developed a novel type of highly stretchable, fiber-based triboelectric nanogenerator (fiber-like TENG). Silicone rubber was selected to fabricate the core fiber; the conductive ink was fabricated from conductive A Highly Stretchable Fiber-Based Triboelectric Nanogenerator for Self-Powered Wearable Electronics