A Breathable, Reliable, and Flexible Siloxene Incorporated Porous SEBS-Based Triboelectric Nanogenerator for Human-Machine Interactions

The breathability of wearable sensors is of utmost necessity as it facilitates heat dissipation and sweat evaporation from the skin-sensor interface for improving the user's comfort and minimizing the inflammation risk. In this work, a Siloxene/porous styrene-ethylene-butylene-styrene (SEBS)-based breathable triboelectric sensor is newly designed and fabricated for increasing user comfort and reliability. The reliability of the fabricated sensor is evaluated by measuring the heat dissipation through the skin-sensor interface using a thermal IR imaging test. Similarly, the sensor's breathability is quantified through a water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) test, where the achieved breathability of 5.88 mg cm-2 h-1 is sufficient for sweat evaporation, as an average person loses 1.2-4.2 mg cm-2 h-1 of sweat. Furthermore, a porous, metal-free, hybridized nanoporous carbon (H-NPC)/laser-induced graphene (LIG) is utilized as a charge-collecting electrode, which is transferred and conformally attached to the Siloxene/SEBS substrate. This results in a reduction in the interfacial resistance and an improvement in bonding between the dielectric and electrode layers. With a pressure sensitivity of 0.75 VkPa-1, the fabricated sensor demonstrates successful application in gesture recognition. Thus, this research showcases the considerable potential for developing triboelectric naongenerators (TENGs) with breathable and reliable features and underscores their broad applicability in human-machine interfaces and soft robotics systems. In this study, a Siloxene/porous styrene-ethylene-butylene-styrene (SEBS)-based breathable triboelectric sensor is reported incorporating hybridized nanoporous carbon/laser-induced graphene (H-NPC/LIG) as a metal-free, flexible electrode. The breathability of the sensor promotes sweat evaporation and heat dissipation through the skin-sensor interface, thus reducing the inflammation risk and ensuring the high reliability of the wearable sensor for human-machine interactions and soft robotics.image