Self-powered transparent and flexible touchpad based on triboelectricity towards artificial intelligence

Combining with an artificial intelligence and 5G technologies, the new era of Internet of Things (IoT) has been emerging. Hence, a human-machine interface (HMI) is becoming indispensable in IoT. However, conventional HMIs are suffering from limitations like, the requirement of power sources and structure-complexity. As a solution, triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) based HMI can be considered as an attractive alternative due to the self-powered operation of TENG. Herein, we suggest the self-powered triboelectricity-based touchpad (TTP) which combines with artificial intelligence consisting of TENG array (49 pixels) constructed on thin, transparent, and flexible substrate, as well as this TTP works based on two major kinds of TENG mechanisms in tapping and sliding modes. The tracing ability of the TTP is demonstrated with high accuracy. Furthermore, the TTP recognizes the digit patterns from ‘0’ to ‘9’ with classification accuracy of 93.6%, 92.2%, and 91.8% at the bending angles of 0°, 119°, and 165° through the pre-trained neural network. With the remarkable applicability of the next-generation HMI in IoT, the TTP is implemented as the smart calculator by using graphical user interface modeling. Considering its good compatibility, it can be expected to be a promising HMI in near future with practical IoT towards artificial intelligence.