There has been much research on renewable energy-harvesting techniques. However, owing to increasing energy demands, significant energy-related issues remain to be solved. Efforts aimed at reducing the amount of energy loss in electric/electronic systems are essential for reducing energy consumption and protecting the environment. Here, we design an energy-loss return gate system that reduces energy loss from electric/electronic systems by utilizing the polarization of liquid dielectrics. The use of a liquid dielectric material in the energy-loss return gate generates electrostatic potential energy while reducing the dielectric loss of the electric/electronic system. Hence, an energy-loss return gate can make breakthrough impacts possible by amplifying energy-harvesting efficiency, lowering the power consumption of electronics, and storing the returned energy. Our study indicates the potential for enhancing energy-harvesting technologies for electric/electronics systems, while increasing the widespread development of these systems.
Energy harvesting is a method of converting energy from ambient environment into useful electrical energy. Due to the increasing number of sensors and personal electronics, energy harvesting technologies from various sources are gaining attention. Among energy-harvesting technologies, triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) was introduced as a device that can effectively generate electricity from mechanical motions by contact-electrification. Particularly, liquid-solid contact TENGs, which use the liquid itself as a triboelectric material, can overcome the inevitable friction wear between two solid materials. Using a commercial aerosol hydrophobic spray, liquid-solid contact TENGs, with a superhydrophobic surface (contact angle over 160°) can be easily fabricated with only a few coating processes. To optimize the fabrication process, the open-circuit voltage of sprayed superhydrophobic surfaces was measured depending on the number of coating processes. To demonstrate the simple fabrication and applicability of this technique on random 3D surfaces, a liquid-solid contact TENG was fabricated on the brim of a cap (its complicated surface structure is due to the knitted strings). This simple sprayed-on superhydrophobic surface can be a possible solution for liquid-solid contact TENGs to be mass produced and commercialized in the future.
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