Triboelectric Touch‐Free Screen Sensor for Noncontact Gesture Recognizing

Abstract

An intelligent human-machine interface (HMI) is a crucial medium for exchanging information between people and electronics. As one of the most important HMI devices, touch screen sensors are widely applied in personal electronics in daily life. However, as the most commonly used touch screen sensor, capacitive sensors can only detect limited kinds of gestures such as touching and sliding. Here, a triboelectric touch-free screen sensor (TSS) is reported for recognizing diverse gestures in a noncontact operating mode by utilizing the charges naturally carried on the human body. Compared with conventional capacitive sensors, the TSS is capable of detecting various gestures such as the drop and lift of finger with different speeds, making a fist, opening palm, and flipping palm with different directions. Based on the TSS, an intelligent noncontact screen control system is further developed, which is used to unlock the smartphone interface by the noncontact operating mode. This research for the first time proposes the concept that taking the human body itself to participate in triboelectric self-powered noncontact sensing and provides a touch-free design concept to develop the next generation of screen sensors. It can alter the usual way that people operating their personal electronics.

Soft Electronics for the Skin: From Health Monitors to Human–Machine Interfaces

“…[205] Furthermore, HMI devices based on TENGs have been developed for both noncontact and tactile interaction. [196,206,207] Breath-based HMIs have been developed by Mao et al to realize household object control which is schematically illustrated in Figure 11a. [196] The TENG was activated by the breathing of the user and the signals were processed and transmitted to the appliance (Figure 11b).…”

Respiration‐driven triboelectric nanogenerators for biomedical applications

“…For instance, metal thin film (such as gold, aluminum made by deposition) and low-modulus polymer film (such as polydimethylsiloxane [PDMS], Kapton, polytetrafluoroethylene [PTFE]) are usually exploited for building flexible/stretchable TENGs. 16,[75][76][77] In the consideration of wearability, TENGs consisting of textile/fabric by weaving triboelectric yarns are developed. [78][79][80] Those yarns have core-shell structure with commercial threads (core) and coatings (shell) possessing strong electrostatic effects.…”

A self-powered, flexible ultra-thin Si/ZnO nanowire photodetector as full-spectrum optical sensor and pyroelectric nanogenerator

“…It means that the PENGs could serve as a power source to power PDs by harvesting energy from the working environment instead of a battery. Comparing with another emerging nanogenerators (triboelectric nanogenerators) [19,20], the PENGs benefit from not requiring external mechanical energy and can make full use of the energy in their own environment. This self-powered system can greatly improve the portability and durability of the flexible PDs.…”