Boosting output performance of sliding mode triboelectric nanogenerator by charge space-accumulation effect.

He, Wencong; Liu, Wenlin; Chen, Jie; Wang, Zhao; Liu, Yike; Pu, Xianjie; Yang, Hongmei; Tang, Qian et al. · Nat Commun · 2020

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

The sliding mode triboelectric nanogenerator (S-TENG) is an effective technology for in-plane low-frequency mechanical energy harvesting. However, as surface modification of tribo-materials and charge excitation strategies are not well applicable for this mode, output performance promotion of S-TENG has no breakthrough recently. Herein, we propose a new strategy by designing shielding layer and alternative blank-tribo-area enabled charge space-accumulation (CSA) for enormously improving the charge density of S-TENG. It is found that the shielding layer prevents the air breakdown on the interface of tribo-layers effectively and the blank-tribo-area with charge dissipation on its surface of tribo-material promotes charge accumulation. The charge space-accumulation mechanism is analyzed theoretically and verified by experiments. The charge density of CSA-S-TENG achieves a 2.3 fold enhancement (1.63 mC m<sup>-2</sup>) of normal S-TENG in ambient conditions. This work provides a deep understanding of the working mechanism of S-TENG and an effective strategy for promoting its output performance.