Integrating a Triboelectric Nanogenerator and a Zinc‐Ion Battery on a Designed Flexible 3D Spacer Fabric

Abstract

batteries, [4][5][6][7] as well as wearable energy harvesting devices, such as wearable photovoltaic devices, [8][9][10] wearable triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs), [11][12][13] have been successfully demonstrated as the power source for electronics. On one hand, the energy and power density of the energy storage devices as well as the conversion efficiency or the output power of the energy harvesting devices has been continually increasing, which boosts the research of the flexible and wearable energy devices. On the other hand, the cooperation between the academic research on the energy storage and harvesting materials with the textile industry has enabled the integration of flexible and wearable energy devices. However, the differences in the physical or chemical mechanisms of the energy storage and harvesting processes make the two distinctive and separate and the intrinsic problems faced by the two individual processes have not been well addressed. For example, the frequent and sometimes inconvenient charging is one of the bottlenecks of the rechargeable batteries, whereas the relatively insufficient conversion efficiency of the solar cells is still restricting their practical applications. Therefore, the combination and integration of the energy harvesting and storage process may be one of the feasible solutions to the problem.Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) that work based on triboelectrification has been proved effective for harvesting random mechanical energy from the environment, such as water wave energy, acoustic energy, and mechanical energy from human motion, and converting them to electricity. [14][15][16][17][18] The TENGs have also been demonstrated as powerful selfpowered sensors for monitoring the movement of human body. [19][20][21] More importantly, due to the generally existed triboelectrification phenomenon in two different materials with different electron affinities, the TENGs could be easily fabricated using fabric-based materials, which are favorable for utilizing and integrating with other wearable energy devices, such as solar cells and supercapacitors. [22][23][24][25][26] However, only limited progress has been achieved in the integration of TENGs with energy storage devices, such as rechargeable batteries or supercapacitors, due to their distinct working principles. For example, the most commonly applied TENGs work on the basis of contact-separation motion of two different materials Powering flexible electronics by wearable energy-storage or energy-harvesting devices has attracted enormous research interest recently. However, the continual powering offered by individual energy-storage devices, such as rechargeable batteries or supercapacitors, becomes problematic once the energy stored is fully discharged. Therefore, the integration of energy-storage and energy-harvesting techniques becomes a feasible approach to provide a continual power supply for flexible and wearable electronics. Herein, an integrated flexible and wearable triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) and recharge...

A review of rechargeable batteries for portable electronic devices

“…To date, various types of flexible batteries including flexible Li-ion, [214][215][216][217][218] Li-sulfur, [219][220][221] Li-air, 210,222 Zn-ion, [223][224][225][226] and Zn-air 12,227-233 batteries have been demonstrated. As shown in Figure 12, some of them have exhibited attractive potentials for PEDs.…”

Beyond Lithium-Based Batteries

“…However, aqueous Zn-ion batteries are among the safest battery systems and with the emerging flexible electronics, the need for flexible energy storage devices increases. For this application, Zn-ion batteries are a fitting choice as a lot of research has already been performed on flexible batteries [118][119][120][124][125][126].…”

Zinc based micro‐electrochemical energy storage devices: Present status and future perspective

“…G, Fabrication protocol and schematic of integrating ZIMBs with the nanogenerator. Reproduced with permission 112 . Copyright 2018, Wiley‐VCH.…”

“…Therefore, an integrated power source in a bracelet was designed based on organic photovoltaic module (Figure 7F) and fiber Zn//Ag battery 43 . Furthermore, triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) and Zn//MnO 2 MBs 112 with the 3D spacer fabrics were successfully integrated with the help of rectifier (Figure 7G), which had a three‐layer configuration separated by mediate support layer with up and down layer, serving as the flexible substrate, in which the space could be filled with gel electrolytes. It was verified that the energy storage efficiency of the electrical energy provided by TENGs was up to 39.8%.…”