Tuesday, 30 May 2017: 14:00
Eglinton Winton (Hilton New Orleans Riverside)
With the rise of wearable electronic technology, the market value of related devices is predicted to exceed $12 billion in 2018. However, the supply of sufficient electricity to operate such devices over an acceptable duration of time without employing a large-sized battery has remained a major challenge for the development. Therefore, the concept of power suit which can harvest renewable energy from the environment to charge the battery in wearable electronic devices has been proposed. In this study, we developed textile-based triboelectric generator to harvest mechanical energy from human motions. The electric outputs generated from the triboelectric generator reached 200 V, 0.1 mA, and 1.5 W/m2. In addition, we also functionalized the textile-based triboelectric generator with self-powered sensing properties. Through the selection of triboelectric materials, the as-developed generator further became self-powered sensors for humidity and ions detection. We believe that the textile-based triboelectric generator can be combined with other healthcare sensors to become smart clothing products in the near future.