Contact-induced continuous electricity generation by ion-electron positive feedback coupled transport for self-powered ionic touch panel

Shang et al. Microsystems & Nanoengineering (2026)12:210 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41378-026-01307-z ARTICLE Microsystems & Nanoengineering www.nature.com/micronano Open Access Contact-induced continuous electricity generation by ion-electron positive feedback coupled transport for self-powered ionic touch panel 1234567890():,; 1234567890():,; 1234567890():,; 1234567890():,; Kedong Shang1,2, Jiahao Fang1, Xiaobo Pu3, Peng Wang3, Yao Chen1,4, Hai Liu1, Ning Zhang1, Junjie Hao1, Yong Zhang1,5, Bingjun Yu1,6, Linmao Qian1,6 ✉ and Tingting Yang 1,6,7 ✉ Abstract Ionic touch panels are regarded as a key platform for future human-computer interaction and meta-universe due to their stretchable, transparent and skin-fitting properties. Inspired by the fact that human skin relies on ionic current to sense contact position information, we have investigated an ionogel based closed-loop electrical system that also converts contact into ionic current to form a self-powered single-layer ionic touch panel. Benefiting from the slowed charge transfer dynamics, the positive feedback coupling of the electrical double layer, and the high-density charge characteristics, the device generates an approximately steady-state electrical signal when touched. It is clearly different from the pulsed electrical phenomenon of conventional contact electrification devices. When a finger touches the touch panel, the voltage/current signal amplitude at each corner electrode of the ionogel has been proven to express the touch position. The continuity of the electrical signal ensures high-resolution recognition of the touch trajectory without the need for further contact separation. With the advantages of good transparency, large stretchability, selfpower, single-layer structure, fast response and high resolution, we expect this emerging ionic touch panel to be an ideal candidate for a variety of human-computer interaction applications. Introduction Integrated touch panels have evolved into various types, including resistive1–4, capacitive5–7, triboelectric8–11, surface acoustic wave12–14, and infrared-based systems15–17. Among these, ionogels have emerged as key materials for next-generation flexible touch panels due to their stretchability, high transparency, and skinfriendliness. The rapid advancement of ionic touch panel technology is expected to enable a wide range of applications, such as human-computer interaction11,18–20, autonomous driving20–22, and metaverse interfaces19,22–24. An ideal touch panel for these applications should possess high transparency, excellent stretchability, Correspondence: Linmao Qian () or Tingting Yang () 1 Tribology Research Institute, School of Mechanical Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, PR China 2 School of Mechanical Engineering, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo, PR China Full list of author information is available at the end of the article and the ability to continuously detect touch positions with high precision. Moreover, it is desirable for the panel to operate without an external power supply, thereby enhancing the flexibility, durability, and lightweight nature of the sensing system. However, both ionic resistive and ionic capacitive touch panels are limited by issues arising from external power supply dependence5,25,26. Ion triboelectric touch panels, while capable of energy harvesting, generate only transient pulsed electrical signals during contact-separation events, making them suitable solely for point-contact sensing and unsuitable for accurately tracking continuous sliding motions27–29. Furthermore, most existing ionic touch panels feature complex, multi-layered structures with stacked layers and electrode arrays. These multilayer interfaces are susceptible to delamination and light diffraction, compromising deformability, optical transparency, and overall reliability30,31. And a comparison of the device characteristics based on the different mechanisms mentioned above is presented in Table S1. To address these challenges, © The Author(s) 2026 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Shang et al. Microsystems & Nanoengineering (2026)12:210 developing an ionic touch panel that outputs near-steadystate electrical signals upon touch and operates with a single-layer structure would significantly broaden its practical applicability. Contact charging is a common phenomenon on ionogel surfaces. When an ionogel comes into contact with another material, ions or electrons can be transferred across the interface22,32,33. If anions (or electrons) and cations (or holes) exhibit differing tendencies to transfer, this asymmetric carrier migration leads to a net charge transfer at the contact interface34–38. Although this phenomenon has been extensively studied, its underlying mechanism remains poorly understood due to the complex coupling between ionic and electronic processes. Nevertheless, it is widely accepted that the contact electrification response decays rapidly—within tens of milliseconds to seconds—owing to fast charge transfer kinetics and limited interfacial charge37,39–42. Therefore, achieving a touch-induced steady-state electrical signal remains a significant challenge. In this work, we present an ionic touch panel with a configuration comprising fixed metal corner electrodes, an ionogel layer, and a movable metal electrode, operating via a triboelectric-potentiometric hybrid sensing mechanism. Contact between the movable electrode and the ionogel surface closes the originally open circuit into a complete electrical loop, transforming the conventional interfacial effect of dynamic electrical double-layer modulation into a bulk effect. This bulk effect, combined with the slow ion migration dynamics of nanoconfined ionogel, enables the output of steady-state electrical signals. Through a series of control experiments, we investigate the coupled transport behavior of electrons and ions underlying this bulk effect and elucidate design principles for the ionogel. The resul (...truncated)