Superhydrophobic, Humidity-Resistant, and Flexible Triboelectric Nanogenerators for Biomechanical Energy Harvesting and Wearable Self-Powered Sensing

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) as self-powered sensing devices have attracted extensive interest in the field of flexible wearable electronics. Endowing TENGs with excellent environmental adaptability and high sensitivity is considered to be one of the promising strategies to satisfy future intelligent electronic sensing devices. The interference of a humid environment and common bare electrode has been a great hindrance to the output performance of TENGs. In this paper, a core–shell superhydrophobic and flexible triboelectric nanogenerator (abbreviated as PP/AgH-TENG) was prepared based on a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) film surface modified with polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) particles as the triboelectric layer and AgNWs/PVA hydrogel as the electrode. The obtained PP/AgH-TENG (4 × 4 cm2 area) can easily light about 360 commercial LED lights with a maximum power density of 3.07 W/m2 by tapping. It is important that PP/AgH-TENG can overcome the effect of water molecules on charge transfer in a humid environment and quickly recover and maintain a high output. In addition, the bracelet made of PP/AgH-TENG can collect the mechanical energy generated by human movement, and these output performance curves clearly reflect the state of human movement. This research has great application potential in the field of intelligent wearable self-powered sensing.