Mechanically Active Transducing Element Based on Solid–Liquid Triboelectric Nanogenerator for Self-Powered Sensing

Abstract

As power generation from the electronically active materials has been made remarkable progress to scavenge the ambient mechanical energy, harnessing energy from fluidics with liquid–solid contact electrification charging from the flow has become new capabilities to be applied as the sensory module. In this paper, a mechanical fluidic nanogenerator based on solid–liquid contact triboelectrification is demonstrated in which liquid electricity signal can be transferred into from the mechanical motion. This simply designed device is composed of Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) tube and copper electrodes at both ends. To evaluate the effectiveness of the device, deionized water (DI) is poured into the tube and the movement is controlled by air flow from the internal volume difference of the rotating mechanism. The peak current value of the mechanical active transducing element based triboelectric nanogenerator (MAT-TENG) signal is used for analyzing movement speed. Speed gradient was applied for back and forth motion of the liquid column with a stable peak of short circuit current and open circuit voltage was about 0.23 µA and 2.31 V, respectively, at the length of the motion amplitude of 23 mm and frequency of 1 Hz. Finally, the flexible MAT-TENG has shown distinct response with the change of the motion length and speed of the liquid and the results have been achieved with better linearity ~ R2 = 0.99. Therefore, the velocity transducing can be very effective in the practical applications of the TENGs based for self-powered sensing.