Pulsed Airstream‐Driven Hierarchical Micro‐Nano Pore Structured Triboelectric Nanogenerator for Wireless Self‐Powered Formaldehyde Sensing

Abstract

Formaldehyde (HCHO), as a common volatile organic compound, has a serious impact on human health in the daily lives and industrial production scenarios. Given the security issue of HCHO detection and danger warning, a ZIF‐8/copper foam based pulsed airstream‐driven triboelectric nanogenerator (ZCP‐TENG) is designed to develop the self‐powered HCHO sensors. By combining contact electrification and electrostatic induction, the ZCP‐TENG can be utilized for airflow energy harvesting and HCHO concentration detection. The short‐circuit current and output power of the ZCP‐TENG can reach 2.0 µA and 81 µW (20 ppm). With the high surface area, abundant micro‐nano pores, and excellent permeation flux, the ZCP‐TENGs exhibit excellent HCHO sensing response (61.3% at 100 ppm), low detection limit (≈2 ppm), and rapid response/recovery time (14/15 s), which can be served as a highly sensitive and selective HCHO sensor. By connecting an intelligent wireless alarm, the ZCP‐TENGs are designed to construct a self‐powered warning system to monitor and remind the HCHO of exceedance situations. Moreover, by combining a support vector machine model, the difference concentrations can be quickly identified with an average prediction accuracy of 100%. This study illustrates that ZCP‐TENGs have broad application prospects and provide guidance for HCHO monitoring and danger warnings.