Self‐Powered Respiration Monitoring Enabled By a Triboelectric Nanogenerator

Abstract

In mammals, physiological respiration involves respiratory cycles of inhaled and exhaled breaths, which has traditionally been an underutilized resource potentially encompassing a wealth of physiologically relevant information as well as clues to potential diseases. Recently, triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have been widely adopted for self‐powered respiration monitoring owing to their compelling features, such as decent biocompatibility, wearing comfort, low‐cost, and high sensitivity to respiration activities in the aspect of low frequency and slight amplitude body motions. Physiological respiration behaviors and exhaled chemical regents can be precisely and continuously monitored by TENG‐based respiration sensors for personalized health care. This article presents an overview of TENG enabled self‐powered respiration monitoring, with a focus on the working principle, sensing materials, functional structures, and related applications in both physical respiration motion detection and chemical breath analysis. Concepts and approaches for acquisition of physical information associated with respiratory rate and depth are covered in the first part. Then the sensing mechanism, theoretical modeling, and applications related to detection of chemicals released from breathing gases are systemically summarized. Finally, the opportunities and challenges of triboelectric effect enabled self‐powered respiration monitoring are comprehensively discussed and criticized.

A high-performance humidity sensor based on alkalized MXenes and poly(dopamine) for touchless sensing and respiration monitoring

“…S6, ESI†). Generally, the humidity sensor needs to recover to their initial states within 3–5 s to accurately monitor breath pattern, 36 the response plus very time of our AMP3-based sensor is only 0.9 s, which can meet the operating requirement. A comparison of the response plus recovery times and sensitivity of some previously reported resistive-type sensors, including PVA/graphene nanofiber, 37 alkalized Ti 3 C 2 T x , 23 Ti 3 C 2 T x /chitosan-quercetin, 38 Ti 3 C 2 T x /PDAC, 24 MoO 3 nanosheets, 7 G/PEDT:PSS, 9 PMDS, 39 silicon-nanocrystal film, 40 and SnS flakes 41 is presented in Fig.…”

Respiratory Monitoring by Ultrafast Humidity Sensors with Nanomaterials: A Review

“…Specific gas components are used to find diseases in clinical breath analysis. The nitric oxide (NO) concentration on a ppb scale increases due to airway inflammation from asthma [ 26 ]. The urea breath test is useful for the detection of helicobacter pylori infection in the stomach, which can be a risk factor for gastric cancer [ 27 ].…”

“…TENG harvests electrical energy from mechanical friction between two materials [ 122 ]. As mechanical movements can be converted to a voltage, TENG has been recently used to monitor respiration from thoracic movements for wearables [ 26 ]. In the work of Zhang et al, the humidity sensor was of an ionic impedance type, based on SnO 2 and reduced graphene oxide nanohybrid film.…”

Modular Point-of-Care Breath Analyzer and Shape Taxonomy-Based Machine Learning for Gastric Cancer Detection

“…Various sensor-based electronic noses have been used in recent years to complement GC-MS for the detection and differentiation of various types of cancers, including gastric cancer [ 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ]. Different self-powered respiration sensors and wearable biosensors are also used for non-invasive chemical breath analysis and physical respiratory motion detection [ 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ]. These can monitor human respiratory patterns and behaviors spontaneously.…”