A Three Dimensional Multi‐Layered Sliding Triboelectric Nanogenerator

Abstract

Harvesting new renewable energy from ambient environment has attracted lots of interest not only for searching renewable and "green" energy for sustainable development, but also for achieving self-powered nanosystems at a small scale. [ 1 ] Until now, various energies have been harvested, such as solar, [ 2 ] geothermal, [ 3 ] biomass, [ 4 ] tide, [ 5 ] and wind. [ 6 ] As one of the most common energy in our living environment, mechanical energy has also been scavenged with diverse approaches based on piezoelectrics, [ 7 ] electrostatics, [ 8 ] and electromagnetics.[ 9 ]Recently, a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) has been demonstrated to be an effective way to convert mechanical energy into electricity, [ 10 ] with performance depending on the coupling of triboelectrifi cation [ 11 ] and electrostatic induction.[ 10a ] Among the factors that affect the performance of the TENG, the suffi cient charge separation [ 12 ] and the friction area [ 13 ] are the two key factors. For charge separation, it depends on the materials used in the device and we can choose materials (one easy to gain electrons, and the other easy to lose electrons) to increase the output performance. [ 14 ] For the friction area, compared with increasing the size of the device, it is a better choice to extend the device from a 2D planar device [ 15 ] to a 3D device.Here, we develop 3D-TENG, with layer-by-layer stacked polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and aluminum as friction materials, based on an in-plane sliding mode between every two adjacent surfaces. Such a 3D multi-layered structure largely increases the friction area in the same space that contributes to the increase in the transferred charge quantity in the circuit. For a 3D-TENG consisting of 20 layers of PVC and 20 layers of aluminum as friction fi lms, the open-circuit voltage ( V oc ) reaches 800 V, the peak short-circuit current density ( J sc ) of 5.5 mA m −2 and a peak power density of 4.4 W m −2 , a maxiumum charge transfer quantity of 2.6 µC, with a sliding displacement of 15 mm. The results clearly demonstrate that the transferred charge quantity monotonically increases with increasing numbers of friction layers. Furthermore, the transferred charge quantity has a good linear relationship with the sliding displacement in a range of 3-15 mm, which means that 3D-TENG can be used as a selfpowered displacement sensor. 160 commercial light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs are instantaneously lit up because the output power of the 3D-TENG is very high; additionally the power generated by the 3D-TENG can be easily and effectively stored into an energy storage device such as a capacitor. The 3D-TENG takes full advantage of the space and largely improves the output of the TENGs, with great potential in self-powered systems, environmental monitoring, defense technology, and even personal electronics.The basic structure of the 3D-TENG is composed of PVC and aluminum friction fi lms stacking layer-by-layer, as illustrated in Figure 1 a. The digital image of the fabricated device is presented in ...

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