Vibration is one of the sources of mechanical energy that manifests itself in various aspects of everyday life, such as the study of seismic movements. Through different devices, vibrations are translated into electric signals which can then interpreted and analysed.

Currently, vibrations produced during seismic events like earthquakes or volcano activity, are transformed into electric energy through different types of transductors (resistive, capacitive, piezoelectric, electromagnetic, etc.), and GPS and microelectromechanic systems (MEMs) are also used as seismic sensors. However, they fail to combine high sensitivity for high and low frequency earth movements. Others like optic fibre may suffer structural damage and more conventional ones such as seismographs only detect movement in one of the three spatial dimensions.

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) can also be used to generate energy from vibrations. However, they are normally designed with loose elements, which reduces their robustness, especially for this specific application in which strong vibrations can affect the integrity of those loose elements and in turn, the reliability of the seismic signal readings.

Researchers from the IMDEA Materials Institute and the Polytechnic University of Madrid have designed a TENG based system integrated in a single piece, that produces extremely accurate seismic readings when submitted to vibrations in the range of 20 Hz to 500 Hz.