Self-powered magnetic sensor based on a triboelectric nanogenerator.

Magnetic sensors are usually based on the Hall effect or a magnetoresistive sensing mechanism. Here we demonstrate that a nanogenerator can serve as a sensor for detecting the variation of the time-dependent magnetic field. The output voltage of the sensor was found to exponentially increase with increasing magnetic field. The detection sensitivities for the change and the changing rate of magnetic field are about 0.0363 ± 0.0004 ln(mV)/G and 0.0497 ± 0.0006 ln(mV)/(G/s), respectively. The response time and reset time of the sensor are about 0.13 and 0.34 s, respectively. The fabricated sensor has a detection resolution of about 3 G and can work under low frequencies (<0.4 Hz).