Triboelectric Nanogenerator Based on Human Hair

Abstract

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) can be incorporated into modern electronic devices requiring sustainable, renewable, and reliable microscale energy sources. We report the first use of human hair, which is known to be a highly triboelectric material, for the fabrication of biobased TENGs. Ethanolic NaOH was used to dissolve hair, and two simple fabrication techniques, bar- and spin-coating methods, were used to prepare hair-based films on electrode substrates. The dissolved hair paste has somewhat different chemical composition from original hair, but the hair-based film has almost the same level as the untreated human hair in the triboelectric series. The spin-coated film is thinner and has more even surface compared with the bar-coated one, and exhibits better performance in triboelectric generation. The TENG using a spin-coated hair film produced the maximum peak-to-peak voltage of 103 V and the power density of 60 mW m–2 across a 1.2 MΩ resistor; using the TENG device, an array of LEDs was in situ lighted without the aid of energy-collecting capacitors. A biowaste human hair offers the advantage of easy accessibility and processability into a highly tribopositive material for TENGs, and our work thus broadens the choice of positive tribo-materials and offers a novel approach for fabricating cost-effective, high efficiency, and biobased TENGs.

Melanin-mimetic multicolor and low-toxicity hair dye

“…In addition to cosmetic and coloration, PDA coating can also render many new potential functionalities to hair because of its remarkable physicochemical versatility. 10,11,33 Therefore, this PDA coated hair can be easily re-functionalized and extended to other related areas such as nanoreactors, 6,34 nanogenerators, 35 energy storage materials 36 and biomimetic sensing devices. 37,38 Conflicts of interest…”

Enhancement of the Triboelectrification Using Artificial Surface Charges

“…Typically, nano-generators are getting famous in the last decade due to the recent advent of Internet-of-Things era with mobile electronic devices [4]. Therefore, different energy nano-generators have been designed such as piezoelectric [5][6][7][8], triboelectric [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27], electric double layer modulation methods [28][29][30][31][32], and reversal of famous electrowetting phenomenon [33][34][35]. It is also known that these methods may provide solutions for the Internet-of-Things devices and limited lifetime of batteries in portable electronics [4].…”

“…First triboelectric nanogenerator was proposed by Z. L. Wang in 2012 [9], claiming that it is an efficient device at low frequency, economical, light weighted, many working configurations/modes and cheap materials as compared to piezoelectric materials [5,9]. Recently, we have also successfully demonstrated some triboelectric nanogenerators to scavenge electricity from the water droplets, human hair, human skin and bubbles inside the water [4,12,15,17]. Moreover, the researchers have fabricated triboelectric generator (TEG) by using the material, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and polyamide 6 (PA 6) [3].…”

A Flexible, Lightweight, and Wearable Triboelectric Nanogenerator for Energy Harvesting and Self‐Powered Sensing

“…Recently, harvesting the ubiquitous energy from people's daily life has caught some eyes for addressing the limitation of the traditional power supplies . A scale‐like TENG was reported by Du et al for its ability to harvest rotary mechanical energy and charge Li‐ion batteries .…”