Humidity Sustained Wearable Pouch-Type Triboelectric Nanogenerator for Harvesting Mechanical Energy from Human Activities

摘要

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) are gaining much research interest recently owing to their facile and cost-effective device structure. However, the effect of relative humidity (in moisture atmosphere) on the output performance still needs to be resolved. Herein, a pouch-type TENG is proposed to significantly reduce the effect of relative humidity on its electrical output and a stable performance is also attained in a humid environment. In this regard, a dielectric and dielectric materials-based TENG (DD-TENG) is first developed using nanoarchitecture polydimethylsiloxane (NA-PDMS) and multiwalled carbon nanotubeylon composite layers as a triboelectric material with the negative and positive tendencies, respectively. The NA-PDMS and nylon composite layers play a key role in increasing the surface contact area and surface charge density between the dielectric/triboelectric materials as well as the output performance of DD-TENG. However, the DD-TENG device exhibits a stable and high output performance with the effective output power density of approximate to 25.35 W m(-2). Additionally, the performance of the pouch-type DD-TENG device is not almost affected even though the relative humidity is increased from 35 to 81%, while it is dramatically decreased for the nonpouch-type device. Finally, the pouch-type DD-TENG is employed as a wearable device to effectively harvest the mechanical energy from daily human activities.