Looking towards world technology trends over the next few decades, self-powered sensing networks are a key field of technological and economic driver for global industries. Since 2006, Zhong Lin Wang’s group has proposed a novel concept of nanogenerators (NGs), including piezoelectric nanogenerator (PENG) and triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), which could convert a mechanical trigger into an electric output. Considering motion ubiquitously exists in the surrounding environment and for any most common materials used every day, NGs could be inherently served as an energy source for our daily increasing requirements or as one of self-powered environmental sensors. In this regard, by coupling the piezoelectric or triboelectric properties with semiconducting gas-sensing characterization, a new research field of self-powered gas-sensing has been proposed. Recent works have shown promising concept to realize NGs based self-powered gas sensors that are capable of detecting gas environment without the need of external power sources to activate the gas sensors or to actively generate a read-out signal. Compared with conventional sensors, these self-powered gas sensors keep the approximate performance. Meanwhile, these sensors drastically reduce power consumption and additionally reduce the required space for integration, which are significantly suitable for the wearable devices. This paper gives a brief summary about the establishment and latest progress in the fundamental principle, updated progress and potential applications of NG based self-powered gas sensing system. The development trend in this field is envisaged and the basic configurations are also introduced.

展望未来几十年的世界技术趋势，自供电传感网络是全球行业技术和经济驱动力的关键领域。自2006年以来，Zhong Lin Wang的小组提出了一种新型的纳米发电机（NGs）概念，包括压电纳米发电机（PENG）和摩擦电动纳米发电机（TENG），它们可以将机械触发器转换为电能输出。考虑到运动无处不存在于周围环境和天天使用任何最常见的材料，NGS可以固有服务作为满足我们日益增长的需求的能源或作为自供电的环境传感器之一。在这方面，通过将压电或摩擦电特性与半导体气敏特性结合起来，提出了自供电气敏的新研究领域。最近的工作已经显示出有希望的概念，以实现基于NG的自供电气体传感器，该传感器能够检测气体环境，而无需外部电源来激活气体传感器或主动生成读出信号。与常规传感器相比，这些自供电式气体传感器保持近似的性能。同时，这些传感器大大降低了功耗，并进一步减少了集成所需的空间，这非常适用于可穿戴设备。本文简要介绍了基于天然气的自供电气体传感系统的基本原理，最新进展和潜在应用的建立和最新进展。展望了该领域的发展趋势，并介绍了基本配置。