Recent Progress of Functional Fiber and Textile Triboelectric Nanogenerators: Towards Electricity Power Generation and Intelligent Sensing

Abstract

Rapid development in wearable electronics has brought huge convenience to human life and gradually penetrated into various indispensable fields, such as health monitoring, medical assistance, smart sports, object tracking and smart home, etc. However, the suitable energy supply system for these wearable electronics remains an important issue to address. Fiber and textile triboelectric nanogenerators (f/t-TENGs), capable of converting biomechanical energy into electricity, have promising features to act as a mobile sustainable power source for wearable electronics or directly serve as an intelligent self-powered sensing solution. Compared with the low-output piezoelectric nanogenerators, hard-to-wear electromagnetic generators and other bulk TENGs, the fiber/textile TENG may be the best type of wearable human mechanical energy harvester at present. Herein, this review comprehensively introduces the recent progress of smart fibers and textiles with a highlight on triboelectric nanogenerators, including the general materials and structures of fiber/textile shaped electronics, various fiber and textile devices for triboelectric/triboelectric-integrated energy harvesting and self-powered smart sensing systems. Moreover, the advance of f/t-TENGs with multifunctionality and large-scale textile processing techniques is summarized as well. Finally, the challenges and perspectives of f/t-TENGs for future improvement, large-scale production and emerging applications are thoroughly discussed as well.