Signal Output of Triboelectric Nanogenerator at Oil-Water-Solid Multiphase Interfaces and its Application for Dual-Signal Chemical Sensing.

Jiang, Peng; Zhang, Lei; Guo, Hengyu; Chen, Chaoyu; Wu, Changsheng; Zhang, Steven; Wang, Zhong Lin · Adv Mater · 2019

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

A liquid-solid contact triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) based on poly(tetrafluoroethylene) (PTFE) film, a copper electrode, and a glass substrate for harvesting energy in oil/water multiphases is reported. There are two distinctive signals being generated, one is from the contact electrification and electrostatic induction between the liquid (water/oil) and the PTFE film (V<sub>TENG</sub> and I<sub>TENG</sub> ); and the other is from the electrostatic induction in the copper electrode by the oil/water interfacial charges (ΔV<sub>interface</sub> and I<sub>interface</sub> ), which is generated only when the liquid-solid contact TENG is inserted across the oil/water interface. The two signals show interesting opposite changing trends that the V<sub>TENG</sub> and I<sub>TENG</sub> decrease while the oil/water interfacial signals of ΔV<sub>interface</sub> and I<sub>interface</sub> increase after coating a layer of polydopamine on the surfaces of PTFE and glass via self-polymerization. As an application of the observed phenomena, both the values of I<sub>TENG</sub> and I<sub>interface</sub> have a good linear relationship versus the natural logarithm of the concentration of the dopamine. Based on this, the first self-powered dual-signal detection of dopamine using TENG is demonstrated.