Packaged triboelectric nanogenerator with high endurability for severe environments

Abstract

Many factors in the environment (such as dust, moisture and rain) severely influence the output performance of a triboelectric nanogenerator (TNG), which greatly limits its application. In this work, we designed and fabricated a kind of packaged TNG (PTNG) that can work normally in dust and humidity for harvesting noise energy. Under a sound wave of 110 dB and 200 Hz, the PTNG can generate a maximum output voltage of 72 V and a maximum output current of 0.66 mA. In the structure of the PTNG, the frictional layers are fully isolated from the ambient environment, which makes it work steadily in dusty and humid conditions without any damping of the output performance. Moreover, it can be used as a stable power source to directly light up 24 red commercial light emitting diodes (LEDs) driven by sound even in a severely rainy environment. This PTNG has great potential to be applied in real environments, which is critically important to the application of TNGs.