Natural Hierarchically Structured Highly Porous Tomato Peel Based Tribo‐ and Piezo‐Electric Nanogenerator for Efficient Energy Harvesting

Abstract

These unconventional harvesting ways can save the environment and make the user's lives safer. [7,8] After the evolutional change made by Z. L. Wang group in the field of energy harvesting as tribo-electric nanogenerators (TENGs), [9] plenty of research has been conducted to improve the efficiency, power-generation, and biocompatibility. [6,10,11] Moreover, as a more durable, highly stable, efficient, and excellently sensitive device, the piezo-electric nanogenerators (PENGs) [5] are also getting more and more attention these days. The electrical energy can easily be generated from TENG/PENG by mechanical motions originated from wind, ocean, and human body actions. Up to the date, remarkably high voltage, current, and power has been achieved from these technologies along with easy fabrication, light weight, and excellent durability. [12] The researchers have previously reported many laboratory synthesized materials (ZnO, ZnSnO 3 , SrTiO 3 , BaTiO 3, etc.) for the piezo-and TENGs. [13][14][15] However, these synthesized materials seriously muddle the natural environment because of the toxic behavior and expensive synthetic processes. [7,8,16] Extensive research has been done so far to study the piezoelectric effect in natural materials. [17] The piezo-electricity in the bio-materials has been reported previously in silk, [18] bacteriophages, [19] eggshell membrane, [20] chitin, [21] and collagens. [22] Among these materials, the collagen fibrils are abundant in organic tissues, fruits, vegetables, and other plants. The intermolecular hydrogen bonding in the collagen fibrils creates a uniaxial orientation of the molecular dipoles responsible for To mitigate future global energy challenges, it is vital to utilize natural resources to harness sustainable and environmentally-friendly energy. This paper explores the tribo-and piezo-electric functionalities of tomato peel (TP) to fabricate a nature-driven hybrid nanogenerator. Tomato is one of the most cultivated vegetables globally, however, a significant amount of TP is disposed after utilization in the food processing industries. The TP possesses a natural hierarchically placed highly porous structure, which is helpful to enhance the output performance of both piezo-and tribo-electric devices. This work shows that a TP based piezo-electric nanogenerator can produce an open circuit voltage of 24.5 V, short circuit current of 2.5 µA, and maximum instantaneous power of 19.5 µW. In addition, the TP based tribo-electric nanogenerator generates open circuit voltage, short circuit current, and instantaneous power of 135 V, 81 µA, and 3750 µW, respectively. Combining two NGs functionalities, the proposed TP based tribo-and piezo-electric nanogenerator (TP-TPENG) shows enhanced output performance with the rectified open circuit voltage, short circuit current, and maximum instantaneous power of 150 V, 84 µA, and 5400 µW, respectively. These results show that the TP-TPENG can offer a new pathway toward bio-based nanogeneration and self-powered sensing green technologies.

Recent Progress of Nanogenerators for Green Energy Harvesting: Performance, Applications, and Challenges

“…Tomato peels (TPs), for example, include 16 different amino acids [ 159 ] and non-centrosymmetric properties due to their low symmetrical orthorhombic and mono-clinic space groups, which might contribute to the piezoelectric effect [ 159 ]. Furthermore, the TPs feature structures with significant porosity, which causes additional displacement owing to applied external stresses, boosting the TPs’ piezoelectricity [ 160 , 161 ]. Furthermore, the hydroxyl groups in TPs’ lutein and zeaxanthin contribute to their piezoelectricity.…”

“…Furthermore, the hydroxyl groups in TPs’ lutein and zeaxanthin contribute to their piezoelectricity. Hydrogen bonding occurs in the hydroxyl group due to the extremely electropositive hydrogen and electronegative oxygen atoms [ 160 ]. According to the findings of these studies, TPs can be employed to generate piezoelectric energy.…”

“…Saqib et al [ 160 ] examined the triboelectric and piezoelectric action of tomato peel (TP) in order to build a hybrid nanogenerator (TP-TPENG) with bio-organic nature materials for collecting green energy with potential applications in pollution-free and self-powered devices. The tomato’s very porous structure boosts the TP-output TPENG’s responsiveness.…”

“…Nanogenerators that operate under mechanical vibrations, on the other hand, should be designed with materials that have adequate structural strength to reduce structural failures caused by cracks, wear, fatigue, or fracture. Recent nanogenerator research [ 39 , 63 , 64 , 160 , 163 , 164 , 165 , 166 , 167 , 168 , 169 ] has focused on organic or waste materials from the environment, such as tomato, chitin, eggshell, fish swim bladder, spider silk, peanut shell, sunflower husks, rice paper, garbage soda cans, silk fibroin, coconut husk, and so on. However, measuring the piezoelectric and triboelectric properties of these materials is extremely difficult.…”

“…( e ) Response of TP ferroelectric hysteresis considering a frequency of 20 Hz. Reprinted with permission from [ 160 ]. Copyright ©2021, John Wiley and Sons.…”