Flexible Hybrid Nanogenerator for Self‐Powered Weather and Healthcare Monitoring Sensor

Abstract

Abstract Nowadays, people can receive several types of information from portable and wearable devices. However, the limited working time period, rigid characteristic, and bulky size of the conventional power sources need to be improved for rocketing the compatibility with portable and wearable devices. In this paper, a flexible hybrid nanogenerator (FHNG) is presented by combining a solar cell, a transparent triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), and a piezoelectric nanogenerator (PENG). The FHNG can sustainably collect energy from various energy sources. The FHNG can act as a self‐powered weather monitoring device by harvesting and detecting raindrops, wind, and sunlight. Especially, the FHNG can simultaneously harvest both electro‐static energy and impact energy of raindrops by the TENG and PENG parts, respectively. Owing to the hydrophobic surface of the outermost TENG part, the FHNG obtains a self‐cleaning characteristic which can improve the output performance of the FHNG under sunlight and raindrops. Furthermore, the FHNG can be used as a wearable self‐powered healthcare monitoring device by sensing the health information, such as human motion, arterial pulse rate, or respiration rate based on the electrical output when attached to a human body. This research contributes to broadening the coverage of self‐powered nano‐device in portable and wearable electronics.