Spontaneously established reverse electric field to enhance the performance of triboelectric nanogenerators via improving Coulombic efficiency.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38755131.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-48456-1 and PMC identifier 11099027.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Mechanical energy harvesting using triboelectric nanogenerators is a highly desirable and sustainable method for the reliable power supply of widely distributed electronics in the new era; however, its practical viability is seriously challenged by the limited performance because of the inevitable side-discharge and low Coulombic-efficiency issues arising from electrostatic breakdown. Here, we report an important progress on these fundamental problems that the spontaneously established reverse electric field between the electrode and triboelectric layer can restrict the side-discharge problem in triboelectric nanogenerators. The demonstration employed by direct-current triboelectric nanogenerators leads to a high Coulombic efficiency (increased from 28.2% to 94.8%) and substantial enhancement of output power. More importantly, we demonstrate this strategy is universal for other mode triboelectric nanogenerators, and a record-high average power density of 6.15 W m<sup>-2</sup> Hz<sup>-1</sup> is realized. Furthermore, Coulombic efficiency is verified as a new figure-of-merit to quantitatively evaluate the practical performance of triboelectric nanogenerators.