Abstract
Storing pulsed energy harvested by triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) from ambient mechanical motion is an important technology for obtaining sustainable, low-cost, and green power. Here, we introduce high-energy-density Li-S batteries with excellent performance for storing pulsed output from TENGs. The sandwich-structured sulfur composites with multi-walled carbon nanotubes and polypyrrole serve as cathode materials that suppress the shuttle effect of polysulfides and thus preserve the structural stability of the cathode during Li-ion insertion and extraction. The charging time and energy storage efficiency of the Li-S batteries are directly affected by the rotation rates of the TENGs. The average storage efficiency of the batteries for pulsed output from TENGs can exceed 80% and even reach 93% at low discharge currents. The Li-S batteries also show excellent rate performance for storing pulsed energy at a high discharge current rate of 5 C. The high storage efficiency and excellent rate capability and cyclability demonstrate the feasibility of storing and exploiting pulsed energy provided by TENGs and the potential of Li-S batteries with high energy storage efficiency for storing pulsed energy harvested by TENGs.
Highlights
Mechanical energy produced everywhere in daily life has been showing considerable promise as a sustainable power supply[1,2,3,4,5]
The power generated from triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) could be stored in lithium ion batteries or supercapacitors[24,25,26,27], the specific capacity and energy released from these storage devices are still low due to the intrinsic features of the materials of these energy storage devices and poor adaptability of the storage materials to the pulse-type current
We present an effective cathode material composed of sandwich-structured sulfur composites with multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and polypyrrole (PPy) for Li-S batteries to meet the energy storage requirement of pulsed output harvested by TENGs
Summary
Characteristics of the Li-S batteries with the MWCNTs/S/PPy composite. The cathode materials of Li-S batteries are composed of MWCNTs/S/PPy composites, which were prepared by depositing S nanoparticles and successively polymerizing PPy on the MWCNT frameworks in situ (Fig. 2a)[32]. The MWCNTs/S/PPy composite electrode delivers a high specific capacity of 1080 mAh/g at a current density of 0.05 C (83.75 mA/g), which is comparable to some previously reported results for lithium-sulfur battery anodes with high volumetric energy[29, 35]. We further study the cycling performance of the MWCNTs/S/PPy composite at the charge rotating rate of 300 rpm and the discharge current density of 1 C. During 50 cycles the specific capacities slightly decline with the increase of the cycle number, but the storage efficiency exhibit a rather steady trend, which indicates that the batteries have good cycling performance for storing the pulsed energy from TENG
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