Flexible Single-Electrode Triboelectric Nanogenerator and Body Moving Sensor Based on Porous Na₂CO₃/Polydimethylsiloxane Film

Abstract

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) converting mechanical energy into electrical energy have received much attention because of their huge potential applications for supplying power to electronic devices. Improving the performance of TENGs has become a research hot point because of their output limited current. In this paper, we propose a flexible single-electrode triboelectric nanogenerator based on porous NaCO/polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) structure to enhance the triboelectric performance for nanogenerators. To compare their output performance, NaCl and sugar are normally used as sacrificial template for triboelectric nanogenerator. As an experimental result, the nanogenerator based on porous NaCO/PDMS structure obtains the open-circuit voltage of 125 V and maximum output current of 100 μA, which are higher than that generated by NaCl/PDMS and sugar/PDMS TENGs. And the generated electric energy of NaCO/PDMS TENG could instantaneously power 42 commercial light-emitting diodes without any energy storage devices. This developed porous NaCO/PDMS TENG could open a new application field for self-powered personal electronics because of its flexibility, simple manufacturing process, and the ability to harvest mechanical energy from human motions.

Synthesis and fabrication of self-sustainable triboelectric energy case for powering smart electronic devices

“…In case of the back part, the output voltage with the capacitors of 0.1 and 0.3 µF was measured as 8.7 and 5.2 V respectively. The 0.3 µF capacitor charges slower than the 0.1 µF capacitor due to the higher loss of charges in the capacitor [80,83,84]. In addition, the output voltage of the front part with the 1, 3.3 and 10 µF capacitors were observed to be 0.78, 0.4 and 0.29 V respectively after charging the capacitors for 60s.…”

Self‐Assembly of Porous Microstructured Polydimethylsiloxane Films for Wearable Triboelectric Nanogenerators

“…Compared with a flat PDMS film, the internal porous structure resulted in an increase of the contact area effectively while more charges were generated to improve the output performance of TENG. [ 21,45 ] Besides, the Young's modulus of PDMS‐N10 film and pure PDMS film was 0.64 and 4.21 MPa respectively, which was measured by tensile instrument and was shown in Figure S3, Supporting Information. The lower Young's modulus of PDMS‐N10 film explained the more softness and larger effective contact area, as compared with that of pure PDMS.…”

“…[ 15,20 ] Porous microstructure modified in PDMS is fabricated for decreasing effective thickness and increasing contact area through the large surface area‐to‐volume ratio to improve performance. [ 19,21 ] There are two main fabrication methods for porous‐structured engineering, template method, and gas foaming method. [ 22 ] Template method is a straightforward method, which can use various solid templates, such as salt crystals and sugar cubes, to form a PDMS skeleton with interconnected cavities via removing and dissolving of templates.…”

Recent progress on flexible nanogenerators toward self‐powered systems

“…Since 2012, the invention of TENG has made full utilization of this effect, converting mechanical energy in the ambient environment into electricity, [88][89][90] such as vibrations, [91][92][93] wind, 94,95 water waves, 96,97 and human motions. [98][99][100][101] Owing to various advantages of TENG, such as a broad range of material selection, simplicity of structure design, cost-effectiveness, and high output, TENG has been intensively explored in the application of flexible power sources and self-powered environmental sensors, which exhibits the great potential for the future development of wearable electronics and the Internet of Things. [102][103][104][105] 3.1 | Operating mechanisms of triboelectricity Figure 5A demonstrates the construction of the first flexible TENG with vertical contact-separation (CS) mode.…”