Triboelectric Energy Harvester performance enhanced by modifying the tribo-layer with cost-effective fabrication

Experimental study of resistive load for impedance matching of triboelectric energy harvester fabricated with patterned polydimethylsiloxane polymer layer

“…The output voltage measurement has been carried using PicoScope 3206D MSO having the internal impedance 1 MΩ ± 1% in parallel with 14 pF ± 1 pF and the PicoScope probe (TA386) impedance at 10X is 10 MΩ ± 2% with 15 pF input capacitance as per specifications. The output current has been measured using a current-to-voltage (I-to-V) converter, which converts the very low current from the TEH device into voltage [26] with a conversion ratio of 100 mV/µA [24]. The voltage and current have been measured simultaneously on the channel-A and channel-B of the PicoScope.…”

“…The actual overlap area is 1440 mm 2 because the remaining area (160 mm 2 ) left out for electrode connection. A detailed study of surface morphology and device performance has been reported [24]. The performance of the loaded device has been compared to the without external load condition, as discussed in the next section.…”

“…The research groups are extensively working on TEH devices from various aspects such as material selection, nano-material [20], fabrication process, surface morphology [11,12,14,15,[20][21][22][23][24], bulk profile [24,25], etc. to enhance the device performance.…”

Cost-effective test set-up for the real-time measurement of the triboelectric energy harvester

“…We have used an I-to-V converter with required modification (labelled ⑨ in Figure 3) for the current measurements with the voltage measuring PicoScope. This modified I-to-V circuit is reported in previous published work (Sharma and Agarwal, 2019). As a proof of concept, an in-house fabricated TEH device has been tested with the proposed setup, as discussed next.…”

“…Many research groups have been working on the performance enhancement of the TEH devices by manipulating surface morphology by incorporating the micro/nanostructures (Chen et al, 2017; Fan et al, 2012a; Meng et al, 2013; Sharma and Agarwal, 2018a, 2019; Wang et al, 2012; Zhu et al, 2013, 2012), bulk, and both (surface+bulk) (Cui et al, 2018; Fan et al, 2017; Kim et al, 2016; Lee et al, 2014; Sharma and Agarwal 2019) of the tribo-pair materials. Most of the TEH devices reported in the literature have been experimentally tested for performance analysis by providing mechanical energy manually either with the finger or hand tapping (Chen et al, 2017; Meng et al, 2013; Sharma and Agarwal 2018a, 2018b, 2019, 2020; Zhang et al, 2017; Zhu et al, 2016), and occasionally foot tapping (Ko et al, 2015; Zhu et al, 2013).…”