How to benchmark triboelectric nanogenerator: a review

Abstract

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) can convert random mechanical vibrations around the environment into electricity and have huge potential in artificial intelligence, blue energy, carbon neutrality, human-machine interface, e-skin, etc. Although many efforts have been made on the working mechanism and performance enhancement in the past decade, characterizing and evaluating the performance of TENGs remains challenging due to the lack of benchmarking guidelines. Previous works based on different measurement methods and metrics as well as the lack of details result in difficulties in performance comparison. In this review, we discuss fundamental works on electrical measurement and performance evaluation of TENGs. Issues in measurement are elucidated and corresponding solutions are presented. Then, the origin and development of the figure-of-merits (FOM) of TENGs are reviewed. The standardization not only broadens our understanding but also facilitates the commercialization and industrialization of TENGs. We believe that the correct measurement and fair evaluation can promote the performance assessment of TENGs and the continuous development of this field.

Directional freezing-induced self-poled piezoelectric nylon 11 aerogels as high-performance mechanical energy harvesters

“…The similar output voltage of the PENG measured before and after shielding the device with a grounded single side conducting layer also demonstrates that the signals are actually piezoelectric outputs of the aerogel PENG. 67–69 The output performance of the anisotropic aerogel-based PENG was also measured by applying force along the transverse direction. The nanogenerator delivered an open-circuit voltage of ∼10.5 V and a short circuit current of ∼54 nA along the transverse direction, which is less than the freezing direction (Fig.…”

Preparation and sensing performance of wet-spun fabric triboelectric nanogenerator for energy harvesting

“…Due to restrictions on the volume and surface area of the fibers, the electrical output of fiber-based TENGs is not high. Therefore, fabric-based TENGs have become an inevitable choice [13][14][15][16][17]. Chen et al [13] also studied the electrical output performance of three basic weaving patterns (plain, sitting, and twill) and reported that the plain pattern had the highest effective illumination area ratio of 96.1%, which delivered the highest current density of 6.35 mA cm −2 .…”