Enhanced Triboelectric Nanogenerators based on the stretchable electrode

Abstract

Harvesting energy from ambient mechanical and solar energy sources is highly desirable for powering portable electronics, biomedical, and healthcare applications Most recently, a new type of power generating device, named as triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) based on triboelectric effects coupled with electrostatic effects have been demonstrated as powerful means of harvesting mechanical energy from living environment. Here, we demonstrate significantly improved the output performance for stretchable electrode based triboelectric nanogenerator. The fabricated TENG is based on the contact and separation between the silver nanowire (Ag NWs) conductors and the PTFE film. we report a highly conductive and stretchable conductor with Ag NWs embedded in the surface layer of poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS). The physics/mechanics origin of such stable conductance is investigated. The stretchable conductors show excellent robustness under repeated mechanical loading. Different Ag NWs TENG were fabricated by variation of the applied Ag NWs concentration from 3.9 to 390 ×103 mg/m2. Higher applied Ag NWs resulted in greater roughness. As expected, the effective surface area expanded as the surface roughness increased. In general, a larger contact area produced higher triboelectricity. Output currents from TENG increased at least 3 times with Ag NWs stretchable electrode.