Facile fabrication of highly porous nylon-11 layer for flexible high-performance triboelectric nanogenerator

Abstract

Here, we report a facile method for the fabrication of flexible triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) with a porous electropositive triboelectric (TE) layer. The electropositive TE layer composed of a highly porous nylon-11 layer on a conductive fabric is first fabricated by the one-pot method of non-solvent phase separation and then assembled with the electronegative TE layer composed of poly-(vinylidene difluoride) (PVDF) nanofibers to obtain the TENG. The TENG is flexible owing to the incorporation of the porous nylon-11 layer and the PVDF nanofibers. Meanwhile, the TENG exhibits outstanding characteristics, including an output open-voltage of 323 V and a power density of 1.06 W/m2, better than those previously reported values in TENGs with nylon-11 TE layers. To demonstrate its power supply capability, the TENG is further used to power practical electronic devices. Our results provide a facile and low-cost approach for the production of a flexible TENG with high performance.