Studying the electrode distribution in a rotary triboelectric nanogenerator using a magnetic stir plate

Abstract

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) were invented to harvest energy from the contact electrification between two materials by electrostatic induction. TENGs have attracted much attention over the last few decades because of the large variability of low-cost materials, their high voltage output, and low current range. The rotatory TENG (R-TENG) is one of the most common operational mode with demonstrated high performance according to their design and working parameters. Designing and understanding TENGs is an ongoing research challenge for those who are new to this field. Herein, we provide a simple reproducible design of R-TENGs using a Teflon™ stir bar in a polystyrene Petri dish to study the effect of electrode distribution and the influence of the triboelectric pair on the electrical output.