Solid-State Electronics 174 (2020) 107920 Available online 12 November 2020 0038-1101/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. A triboelectric nanogenerator based on white sugar for self-powered humidity sensor Hongye Liu a, * , Hao Wang a , Yanping Fan a , Yan Lyu b , Zenghua Liu b a School of Optical-Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, No. 580 Jungong Road, Shanghai 200093, PR China b College of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Electronics Technology, Beijing University of Technology, No. 100 Pingleyuan, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100124, PR China A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) Humidity sensor Self-powered system White sugar Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) ABSTRACT The triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) based on the contact-electrification and electrostatic induction are attractive for the abundant application in many disciplines. To explore the practical application of TENG devices, we firstly reported a novel TENG based on the white sugar (WS-TENG) to harvest mechanical energy, and simultaneously, which can also serve as the self-powered humidity sensor due to the essential hydrophilic property of white sugar molecules. In this work, the polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) film and white sugar play the role of triboelectric parts. Moreover, the electrical output of WS-TENG involved in the short-circuit current (I sc ) and open-circuit voltage (V oc ) can get to 6.35 µA and 95.68 V, respectively. The fabricated WS-TENG has good long-term durability and reliability. According to the experimental results, the self-powered humidity sensor based on the WS-TENG can reflect the humidity change of the environment. The current research could effec- tively promote the practical application of TENG devices. 1. Introduction At present, the renewable energy has an important role in the development of communication, information and the internet of things (IoT), thus the exploitation and utilization of renewable energy have great potential [1,2]. Remarkably, there are abundant green and renewable energy resources in our living environment, such as wind energy, solar energy, tidal energy, and various forms of mechanical vi- bration energy [3–7]. Compared to conventional energy, e.g. petroleum, coal, gas, the renewable green energy not only has abundant reserves but also does not pollute the environment [8,9]. Therefore, to develop green energy harvesting technology, large numbers of research efforts have been devoted. Additionally, as an important part of the IoT, the distributed sensor networks would be used more and more widely [10]. In recent years, they have developed rapidly, and have become the foundation technologies of intelligent materials and structures. How- ever, due to the intricacy in recharging or replacing the battery of each node in a wireless distributed sensor network, the new energy supply technology has been a major concern as the majority of developed sensor nodes are typically battery operated devices [11]. In 2012, a novel mechanical energy harvester, i.e. triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), based on the triboelectrification was reported, and then has been demonstrated as an energy harvester with great application prospect [12–17]. This major discovery has subsequently attracted widespread attention in many disciplines [18,19]. In our living environment, triboelectrification phenomenon can occur between any two different dielectric materials, and in the meantime, there are various forms of triboelectrification, which provides rich structural design basis for TENG devices. Besides, the TENG devices can be manufactured through means of low cost and rapid production, and thus realize large- scale production and promote practical application of TENGs [20,21]. In the past few years, many research works have been made to improve the performance of TENGs in the field of energy harvesting, such as struc- ture design, materials combination, and theoretical research [22–24]. Nevertheless, there is still a lot of work to do, including exploration of new triboelectric material, functional application of TENG devices, and low cost preparation technology, etc [25]. It is noteworthy that the TENG devices can not only harvest mechanical energy but also as the self-powered sensor [26–30]. And therefore, it is a new path to design and manufacture TENG devices with sensing function based on the particularity of different materials to promote the development of TENGs. In this regard, we first utilized the white sugar to create a novel triboelectric nanogenerator (WS-TENG) with considering the * Corresponding author. E-mail address: liuhongye@usst.edu.cn (H. Liu). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Solid State Electronics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/sse https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sse.2020.107920 Received 6 June 2020; Received in revised form 26 September 2020; Accepted 4 November 2020