Electronegative polyvinylidene fluoride/C60 composite nanofibers for performance enhancement of triboelectric nanogenerators

Abstract

Recently, sustainable energy harvesting technologies have received much attention for powering the internet of things architecture. Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have been regarded as the most promising energy harvesting technology because they can generate a large amount of electrical energy even with very weak mechanical energy and very simple structures. Although there has been much investigation, TENG devices continue to be associated with insufficient levels of converted electrical power. In this study, we report the enhancement of TENG performance outputs based on polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF)/fullerene (C60) composite nanofibers (NFs). Structural and chemical investigations show that C60 is uniformly incorporated into PVDF NFs with C60 content levels of less than 0.3 mg. PVDF/C60 composite NFs exhibit a consistent β-phase ratio regardless of the C60 content. Here, as the C60 content was increased from 0 to 0.2 mg, the maximum output power of the PVDF/C60 composite NF-based TENG devices increased from 129 to 282 μW, while it decreased to 147 μW with further addition of C60 beyond 0.4 mg. The enhanced TENG performance realized with an increase in the C60 content originated from the increased trap charge ability and the high electronegativity caused by the incorporated C60 in the PVDF matrix. The output power from a PVDF/C60 composite NF-based TENG device was sufficient to operate an eco-friendly display device.