An Eco-Friendly and Dual-Functional Ag@BMO-Chitosan-Based Triboelectric Nanogenerator for Self-Powered Gas Sensing Application

Abstract

Real-time monitoring of hazardous gases is critical to determine the influence of the air environment on the lives of people. Herein, a highly biodegradable chitosan-based triboelectric gas sensor has been successfully fabricated by using Ag@Bi2MoO6-Chitosan (Ag@BMO-CS) bilayer film obtained with the facile drop-casting method, which paired with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) film as triboelectric layers. The output voltage of the 5% Ag-modified chitosan bilayer-based triboelectric nanogenerator reaches up to 8.35 V at 2 Hz operating frequency. The integrated self-powered gas sensor based on the triboelectrification and gas adsorption effects shows the ability to distinguish ammonia (NH3) gas sensitively, and the response to 20 ppm NH3 (ΔV/Va = 59.1%) is 1.4 times larger than the separated self-powered sensor. In addition, the sensing mechanism combining the triboelectric effect and gas-sensing reaction was proposed to demonstrate the enhancement of NH3 sensing performance for Ag@BMO-CS-based triboelectric gas sensors. This work presents a sustainable self-supply gas sensor based on TENG for the detection of NH3 gas without any external power supply, which has a broad spectrum of applications in hazardous gas leaks, non-invasive diagnostics and fresh food transportation.