Wearable Triboelectric/Aluminum Nitride Nano‐Energy‐Nano‐System with Self‐Sustainable Photonic Modulation and Continuous Force Sensing

Abstract

Abstract Wearable photonics offer a promising platform to complement the thriving complex wearable electronics system by providing high‐speed data transmission channels and robust optical sensing paths. Regarding the realization of photonic computation and tunable (de)multiplexing functions based on system‐level integration of abundant photonic modulators, it is challenging to reduce the overwhelming power consumption in traditional current‐based silicon photonic modulators. This issue is addressed by integrating voltage‐based aluminum nitride (AlN) modulator and textile triboelectric nanogenerator (T‐TENG) on a wearable platform to form a nano‐energy‐nano‐system (NENS). The T‐TENG transduces the mechanical stimulations into electrical signals based on the coupling of triboelectrification and electrostatic induction. The self‐generated high‐voltage from the T‐TENG is applied to the AlN modulator and boosts its modulation efficiency regardless of AlN's moderate Pockels effect. Complementarily, the AlN modulator's capacitive nature enables the open‐circuit operation mode of T‐TENG, providing the integrated NENS with continuous force sensing capability which is notably uninfluenced by operation speeds. Furthermore, a physical model is proposed to describe the coupled AlN modulator/T‐TENG system. With the enhanced photonic modulation and the open‐circuit operation mode enabled by synergies between the AlN modulator and the T‐TENG, optical Morse code transmission and continuous human motion monitoring are demonstrated for practical wearable applications.

Keywords

• motion monitoring
• photonic modulators
• triboelectric nanogenerators
• wearable textiles