An integrated temperature and humidity dual-parameter triboelectric sensor

Abstract

Integrated self-powered triboelectric sensors using sensitive materials as the triboelectric layer have the advantages of large signal amplitude, high integration, simple structure, and easy preparation. However, most of the current studies focus on single-parameter sensors. In this work, an integrated decouplable temperature and humidity dual-parameter triboelectric sensor is proposed, which contains a vertical contact-separation mode triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) and a conductive polyethylene (c-PE) film. The TENG responds to humidity changes from 30%RH to 80%RH through output voltage variations based on the sensitive polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film. The inserted c-PE film realizes temperature sensing from 20 °C to 70 °C through changes in resistance based on the positive temperature coefficient effect, which is further applied to compensate the TENG for accurate humidity measurements. The compensation algorithm effectively reduces the maximum testing error of the humidity parameter from 31.34% to 7.29%. The proposed dual-parameter sensor provides an innovative strategy for the design and integration of dual-parameter sensors, showing great potential in intelligent sensors.