Recently, a new progress in flexible triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG) has been achieved by the concerted efforts of Prof. Xu Yun’s Group in Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, with their collaborators in University at Buffalo.

Portable and wearable electronics (e.g. cell phone, smart band, smart watch etc.) are indispensable in our daily life due to the advances of information technologies. However, the limited operation time of these devices is one of the most significant limitations due to the performance of batteries. For example, many people had embarrassing experience to look for charging stations for emergencies when the device is short of power.

Therefore, portable/wearable electricity generators is one of the solutions to address this practical issue. Triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is a promising portable energy sources to harvest human energy from walking, talking, typing and more. Researchers have reported great improvement in improving the output power. Unfortunately, most are difficult to manufacture or are not cost effective.

To address both of those concerns, recently, Prof. Xu Yun and her PhD student Chen Huamin demonstrated a novel TENG. Utilizing simple macrocontrols instead of expensive lithography technology, the output performance was effectively increased.

According to the research group, the TENG (1.5 cm ′ 1 cm) was able to generate a voltage that could light 48 red LED lights simultaneously.

Furthermore, to demonstrate the application of the unique TENG as a power source, Prof. Xu Yun’s Group characterized its dependence on several environment factors including frequency, temperature, force and mechanical endurance, which shows excellent reliability and stability.

Electricity is also generated when body movements such as bending a finger or rotating the wrist. It shows the potential to power wearable electronics by the human body in the future.

This work is promising in wearable electronics, robotics and self-powered systems applications.

This work was recently published in Nano Energy (DOI: 10.1016/j.nanoen.2018.01.032). It was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program), National Natural Science Foundation of China and Key Research Projects of the Frontier Science of the Chinese Academy of Science.

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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211285518300405