Highly porous polymer aerogel film-based triboelectric nanogenerators

Abstract

A novel class of high performance polymer porous aerogel flm-based triboelectric nanogenerators (A-NGs) is demonstrated. The A-NGs, made of a pair of highly porous polymer flms, exhibit much higher triboelectric outputs than the corresponding dense polymer flm-based triboelectric nanogenerators (D-NGs) under the same mechanical stress. The triboelectric outputs of the A-NGs increase signifcantly with increasing porosity, which can be attributed to the increase in contact area and the electrostatic induction in the porous structure, thereby leading to additional charges on the porous surface. Remarkably, the A-NG fabricated using porous chitosan aerogel flm paired with the most porous polyimide (with a porosity of 92%) aerogel flm demonstrates a very high voltage of 60.6 V and current of 7.7 μA, corresponding to a power density of 2.33 W m⁻², which is suffcient to power 22 blue lightemitting- diodes (LEDs). This is the frst report on triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) employing porous polymer aerogel flms as both positive and negative materials to enhance triboelectric outputs. Furthermore, enhancing the tribopositive polarity of the cellulose aerogel flm via silanization using aminosilane can dramatically improve the triboelectric performance. Therefore, this study provides new insights into investigating porous materials with tunable triboelectric polarities for high performance TENGs.

Citation

Zheng, Qifeng; Fang, Liming; Guo, Haiquan; Yang, Kefang; Cai, Zhiyong; Meador, Mary Ann B.; Gong, Shaoqin. 2018. Highly porous polymer aerogel film-based triboelectric nanogenerators. Advanced Functional Materials. 28(13). 9 p.