Tribotronic bipolar junction transistor for mechanical frequency monitoring and use as touch switch

Fengben Xi; Yaokun Pang; Wenjian Li; Tianzhao Bu; Junqing Zhao; Guoxu Liu; Tong Guo; Wenbo Liu; Chi Zhang

doi:10.1038/s41378-018-0026-1

Tribotronic bipolar junction transistor for mechanical frequency monitoring and use as touch switch

Microsyst Nanoeng. 2018 Nov 5:4:25. doi: 10.1038/s41378-018-0026-1. eCollection 2018.

Authors

Fengben Xi^#^{1

2}, Yaokun Pang^#^{1

2}, Wenjian Li^{1

2}, Tianzhao Bu^{1

2}, Junqing Zhao^{1

2}, Guoxu Liu^{1

2}, Tong Guo¹, Wenbo Liu¹, Chi Zhang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ 1CAS Center for Excellence in Nanoscience, Beijing Key Laboratory of Micro-nano Energy and Sensor, Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100083 Beijing, China.
² 2School of Nanoscience and Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100049 Beijing, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Tribotronics, a new field that involves the coupling of triboelectricity and semiconductors, has attracted great interest in the nanoenergy and nanoelectronics domains. This paper proposes a tribotronic bipolar junction transistor (TBJT) that incorporates a bipolar junction transistor and a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) in the single-electrode mode. When the mobile triboelectric layer slides on the device surface for electrification, a bias voltage is created and applied to the emitter junction, and then the base current from the TENG is amplified. Based on the fabricated TBJT, a mechanical frequency monitoring sensor with high sensitivity and excellent stability and a finger-triggered touch switch were developed. This work demonstrated for the first time a tribotronic device with simultaneously controlled voltage and current voltage/current simultaneously controlled tribotronic device, which has promising potential applications in micro/nano-sensors, human-machine interactions, intelligent instrumentation, wearable electronics, and other applications.