A soil-based pressure sensor for human motion monitoring

With advancements in the Internet of things (IoT) technology, the construction of the self-powered distributed sensor network is important. Here, we proposed a low-cost triboelectric nanogenerator based on soil (S-TENG) to convert mechanical energy into electrical energy, and meanwhile, it can serve as the self-powered pressure sensor. The natural soil and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) film play the role of triboelectric layers. The electrical performance of the S-TENG (size: 5 cm × 5 cm) is 344.7 V, 34.8 µA, 68.95 nC, and 0.99 mW. Besides, we also design a self-powered pressure sensor based on the S-TENG, and the brightness of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) can reflect the pressure. This research can release a new applications for pressure monitoring.