Skin-attachable motion sensor based on triboelectric nanogenerator with Chitosan-Diatom composite film

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) can be utilized as power sources of wearable devices because of flexibility, light weight and cost effective devices. However, materials utilized in the wearable devices should be carefully selected to avoid side effects to the human body. In this work, we developed a chitosan-diatom (CD) composite film for triboelectric nanogenerators(TENGs) and fabricated a skin-attachable motion sensor. The CD film was composed of the chitosan and diatom silica. All of materials are biomaterials which cannot cause side effects. The biocompatible diatom silica embedded in the chitosan film enhanced the positive charge density of the chitosan film. The CD film was assembled with the fluorinated ethylene propylene (FEP) film for a contact and separation TENG. The maximum instantaneous power density was 468 mW/m2, which was 3.5 times higher than the chitosan film. Furthermore, the skin-attachable motion sensor was developed base on the CD TENG. We believe this work can provide the simple and safe way to increase the performance of biocompatible TENGs for wearable devices.