Nanogenerator as self-powered sensing microsystems for safety monitoring

Abstract A fast and accurate real-time safety monitoring system can encourage people to work and live more safely and comfortably. Developing flexible, portable, and sustainable microsystems to monitor the safety status remains a challenge in the electronic devices. These traditional’ sensors always bring about enormous time-consuming energy and complex power supply wire arrangements. Nanogenerator (NG), an emerging energy-harvesting device, provides a pathway to sense different safety-related information (SRI) without external power sources. So far, by different operating mechanisms, NGs, including piezoelectric nanogenerator (PENG), triboelectric nanogenerator (TENGs), and pyroelectric nanogenerator (PyNGs), have a booming development in safety monitoring. This work provides a comprehensive review of the safety monitoring application based on NGs for monitoring SRI about environments, machines, and human, such as hazard sources in the workplace, abnormal machine status, and unhealthy worker. Meanwhile, several methods of processing SRI and typical NGs safety monitoring systems are summarized. Finally, the perspectives and challenges about the future development and application of NGs for safety monitoring were also discussed. It is anticipated that NG sensors will promote a low-cost, precise and intelligent way for safety monitoring, which is expected to bring a new safety concept at technical aspects.