Study of Triboelectric Potential for Tunable Contact-Electrification Field-Effect Transistors

Tribotronics is an original field studying the coupling bet- ween triboelectricity and semiconductors. Contact-electrification field-effect transistors (CE-FETs) have emerged as promising tribotronic devices capable of implementing novel electromechanical devices for human–robot interfacing, sensing platforms, and active flexible electronics in the near future. This letter presents the design, fabrication, and characterization of CE-FETs consisting of a triboel- ectric nanogenerator (TENG)—using zinc oxide and polyethylene terephthalate as tribopositive and tribonegative materials, respecti- vely, coupled to a driven metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (<sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">mosfet</small>). Optimizing the triboelectric properties of selected materials and operating TENG with frequencies ranging between 2 and 10 Hz and electrode distances ranging from 2 to 10 mm, the modulation of the output characteristics of the <sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">mosfet</small> via external mechanical forces has been demonstrated.