DEVELOPMENT OF ELECTRONIC SKIN BASED ON BIDIRECTIONAL DIRECT CURRENT TRIBOELECTRIC NANOGENERATOR

Abstract

The present paper studies the development of the design of electronic skin by introducing bidirectional direct current triboelectric nanogenerator (BDC-TENG) to work as self-powered sensor. The feedback signal generated from the BDC-TENG due to the sliding of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) on polyamide (PA) is tested. It is aimed that BDC-TENG generates electric current from the sliding of PTFE on PA, where the polarity depends on the motion direction. The generated DC current works as feedback signal to control the sliding of the object surface on e-skin. It was observed that the proposed DC-TENG generated bidirectional voltage of signal depends on the sliding direction. When the thickness of PU sponge substrate increased, voltage slightly increased due to the soft contact between PTFE and PA provided by PU foam layer that increased the contact area. Besides, as the load increased, voltage increased. Copper electrodes displayed higher voltage than aluminium ones, where the voltage increased with increasing the width and length of the electrode due to the increase of the contact area of electrode that collects ESC from both the sliding surfaces. In addition, when PA was replaced by PMMA strings, voltage increased up to maximum then decreased with the increase of the electrode width, while voltage slightly increased as electrode length increased. The sliding of PTFE directly on the PU foam significantly increased the voltage. During sliding, DC-TENG generates direct current in two directions.