A Nonmetallic Stretchable Nylon‐Modified High Performance Triboelectric Nanogenerator for Energy Harvesting

Abstract

As a new energy harvesting strategy, triboelectric nanogenerators which have a broad application prospect in collecting environmental energy, human body mechanical energy, and supplying power for low‐power electronic devices, have attracted extensive attention. However, technology challenges still exist in the stretchability for the preparation of some high‐performance triboelectric materials. In this work, a new strategy for nonmetallic nylon‐modified triboelectric nanogenerators (NM‐TENGs) is reported. Nylon is introduced as a high performance friction material to enhance the output performance of the stretchable TENG. The uniform matrix reduces the difficulty of heterogeneous integration and enhances the structural strength. The open‐circuit voltage (VOC) and short‐circuit current (ISC) of NM‐TENG can reach up to 1.17 kV and 138 µA, respectively. The instantaneous power density reaches 11.2 W m−2 and the rectified output can directly light ≈480 LEDs. The transferred charge density is ≈100 µC m−2 in one cycle when charging the capacitor. In addition, a low‐power electronic clock can be driven directly by the rectified signal without additional circuits. NM‐TENG also has high enough strain rate and can be attached to the human body for energy harvesting effectively. This work provides a new idea for fabrication of stretchable TENGs and demonstrates their potential application.

Recent Advances in Self‐Powered Tribo‐/Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters: All‐In‐One Package for Future Smart Technologies

“…[ 36 ] Further, wave energy has considerable advantages for large power and its wide distribution. [ 18,37 ] In recent years, water wave farms have been developing around ≈1 to ≈10 MW at any single time, which is sufficient to provide power to a city/town. However, there are no marketable wave farms because of the lack of sufficient technology.…”

“…Currently, among various renewable energies, triboelectric/piezoelectric nanogenerators (TNGs/PNGs) that utilize mechanical energy are considered the most promising energy harvesting approaches toward green technologies [11,14,15,16] This is because electricity can be easily and effectively obtained from mechanical motion (blue energy, wind energy, acoustic energy) or biomechanical reactions (various human or animal body motions). [17][18][19][20][21][22] These energy harvesting technologies can be used for vibration sensors, nanosensors, wearable electronics, and e-healthcare monitoring (in vivo/in vitro biomedical applications). Further, these technologies are environmentally friendly, which is essential for modern highly polluted electronics (e-waste).…”

A stretchable triboelectric nanogenerator made of silver-coated glass microspheres for human motion energy harvesting and self-powered sensing applications

“…The TENG generates an open-circuit voltage of 3.82 V and a short-circuit current of 65.8 nA. There are two more references focused on stretchable TENGs utilizing SCGMs to harvest biomechanical energy [ 16 – 17 ]. Zhang et al invented a closed-structure TENG made of stretchable materials for harvesting human motion energy and monitoring [ 17 ].…”

Flexible Textile‐Based Self‐Driven Sensor Used for Human Motion Monitoring

“…In recent years, flexible wearable sensors have attracted surging interests due to their advances in science and technology, and they are expected to be widely applied in sports monitoring, medical health, etc . However, most wearable sensors are still making use of traditional batteries to support their work so far; known to all, traditional power sources are unable to meet the requirements for comfort and durability of flexible sensors due to their large size and weight, let alone the environmental problems caused by them . Therefore, it is extremely important for the sensor to have self‐generating signals that can effectively support their work and many studies have been devoted to this aspect .…”

“…In regard of this, self‐driven sensors have been developed to convert the mechanical driving force into pulsed voltage signals, by analyzing the output electrical signals; information such as the pressure and frequency of the external driving force is obtained without external power sources. This technology has been applied to electronic skins, touch sensing,[3b,12] and other aspects nowadays …”