Direct‐Current Triboelectric Nanogenerator Realized by Air Breakdown Induced Ionized Air Channel

By Jianjun Luo, Liang Xu, Wei-Yao Tang, Tao Jiang, F. Fan, Y. Pang, Libo Chen, Yan Zhang, Zhong Lin Wang. Advanced Energy Materials, 2018

141 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The air breakdown phenomenon is generally considered as a negative effect in previous research on triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs), which is always accompanied by air ionization. Here, by utilizing the air breakdown induced ionized air channel, a direct‐current triboelectric nanogenerator (DC‐TENG) is designed for harvesting contact‐separation mechanical energy. During working process, the charges first transfer from bottom to top electrodes through an external circuit in contact state, then flow back via the ionized air channel created by air breakdown in the separation process. So a unidirectional flow of electrical charges can be observed in the external circuit. With repeating contact‐separation cycles, continuous pulsed DC output through the external circuit can be realized. This working mechanism was verified by real‐time electrode potential monitoring, photocurrent signal detection, and controllable discharging observation. The DC‐TENG can be used for directly and continuously charging an energy storage unit and/or driving electronic devices without using a bridge rectifier. Owing to its simplicity in structure, the mechanism is further applied to fabricate the first flexible DC‐TENG. This research provides a significant fundamental study for DC‐TENG technology and may expand its application in flexible electronics and flexible self‐charging power systems.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Cognitive Neuroscience, Polymers and Plastics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/32d217747b5b1869695211835cee24c1179b75f9

How researchers see this paper

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In Biomedical Engineering

1. Xinge Guo
2. Chengkuo Lee
3. Long Liu
4. Tianyiyi He
5. Feng Wen
6. Qiongfeng Shi
7. Bowei Dong
8. Jianxiong Zhu

In Cognitive Neuroscience

1. Chengkuo Lee
2. Xinge Guo
3. Long Liu
4. Tianyiyi He
5. Feng Wen
6. Qiongfeng Shi
7. Jianxiong Zhu
8. Bowei Dong

In Polymers and Plastics

1. Chengkuo Lee
2. Xinge Guo
3. Long Liu
4. Tianyiyi He
5. Qiongfeng Shi
6. Feng Wen
7. Philippe Vachon
8. Yanqin Yang

Citations in the corpus

• Progress in TENG technology—A journey from energy harvesting to nanoenergy and nanosystem (2020, background): “To achieve multi-functionalities, with the aid of triboelectric materials and structural designs, advanced electrode designs can also be incorporated into conventional TENGs, resulting in applicationoriented TENG configurations, that is, operating independently in the form of real-time and situ sens”