Abstract
Due to their high charge densities, electret materials have gained extensive attention in recent years for their abilities to harvest mechanical energy. However, the environmental stability of electret materials is still a major concern for real applications. Here, we report a thin-film nanocomposite electret material (NCEM) that exhibits immediate and effective self-recovery of the surface potential after water dipping. The NCEM is composed of a polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) film, a nanocomposite film with PTFE nanoparticles as the nanofiller and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) as the matrix. The surface potential of the NCEM resulting from corona charging could be stably maintained with very little decay of 2% after 25 days. More importantly, the surface potential exhibited quick self-recovery to 75% and 90% of its initial value after 10 min and 60 min, respectively, when the NCEM was removed from water. A 70% self-recovery was still observed even when the NCEM was dipped in water for 200 cycles. When used in electret nanogenerators (ENGs), the electric output recovered to 90% even when the ENG experienced water dipping. Therefore, this work presents a key step towards developing high-performance and environmentally stable energy harvesting nanogenerators that can survive harsh conditions for real applications.
Highlights
An electret material is a type of dielectric material that possesses quasi-permanently preserved electric charges
We developed an environmentally stable thin-film nanocomposite electret material (NCEM) that exhibits immediate and effective self-recovery of the surface potential after water dipping
The surface potential could quickly recover to 75% and 90% of its initial value after 10 min and 60 min when the NCEM was removed from water, respectively
Summary
An electret material is a type of dielectric material that possesses quasi-permanently preserved electric charges. Electret charges can be categorized as surface charges, space charges, and dipolar charges [1,2,3,4,5] This type of material has been widely used in microphones, piezoelectric transducers, dosimeters, and gas filters [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]. It is considerably important to study electret materials that can largely retain their electret charges even after exposure to extreme environments so that they can be potentially adopted to harvest ambient energy in a stable and robust way. We developed an environmentally stable thin-film nanocomposite electret material (NCEM) that exhibits immediate and effective self-recovery of the surface potential after water dipping. This work presents a key step towards developing high-performance and environmentally stable energy harvesting nanogenerators from the aspect of materials
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