Rationally patterned electrode of direct-current triboelectric nanogenerators for ultrahigh effective surface charge density

Zhihao Zhao,Jie Wang,Yejing Dai,Di Liu,Zhong Lin Wang,Linglin Zhou,Shaoxin Li

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-20045-y

Abstract

As a new-era of energy harvesting technology, the enhancement of triboelectric charge density of triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is always crucial for its large-scale application on Internet of Things (IoTs) and artificial intelligence (AI). Here, a microstructure-designed direct-current TENG (MDC-TENG) with rationally patterned electrode structure is presented to enhance its effective surface charge density by increasing the efficiency of contact electrification. Thus, the MDC-TENG achieves a record high charge density of ~5.4 mC m−2, which is over 2-fold the state-of-art of AC-TENGs and over 10-fold compared to previous DC-TENGs. The MDC-TENG realizes both the miniaturized device and high output performance. Meanwhile, its effective charge density can be further improved as the device size increases. Our work not only provides a miniaturization strategy of TENG for the application in IoTs and AI as energy supply or self-powered sensor, but also presents a paradigm shift for large-scale energy harvesting by TENGs.

Highlights

As a new-era of energy harvesting technology, the enhancement of triboelectric charge density of triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is always crucial for its large-scale application on Internet of Things (IoTs) and artificial intelligence (AI)
The working mechanism of DC-TENG is based on the triboelectrification effect and the electrostatic breakdown between the friction surface and the charge-collecting electrode (CCE; detailed in Supplementary Note 1), which is free from the limitation of σdielectric breakdown
It can be seen from the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) image of the MDC-TENG sample (Fig. 1c) that each FE is about 250 μm in width and the CCE (~100 μm in width) is located between two FEs

Summary

Introduction

As a new-era of energy harvesting technology, the enhancement of triboelectric charge density of triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is always crucial for its large-scale application on Internet of Things (IoTs) and artificial intelligence (AI). Various TENGs have been intensively conducted in two categories: (i) coupling CE with electrostatic induction, the TENG gives an alternating current (AC-TENG)[6,7,8]; (ii) coupling CE with electrostatic breakdown, the TENG generates a direct current (DC-TENG)[9,10] These different types of TENGs provide effective techniques for harvesting distributed mechanical energy, wave energy, and biomechanical energy, and show a great potential in application of Internet of Things, implantable medical devices, and artificial intelligence as micro/nano energy or self-powered sensors[11,12,13,14,15,16]. The reported maximum value is only 0.64 mC m−2 due to the limitation of σtriboelectrification[27], which is lack of the accumulation process of triboelectric charges compared with AC-TENG

Methods

Results

Conclusion