Boosting Output Performance of Sliding Mode Triboelectric Nanogenerator by Shielding Layer and Shrouded-Tribo-Area Optimized Ternary Electrification Layered Architecture

Sliding mode triboelectric nanogenerator (S-TENG) is effective for low-frequency mechanical energy harvesting owing to their more efficient mechanical energy extraction capability and easy packaging. Ternary electrification layered (TEL) architecture is proven useful for improving the output performance of S-TENG. However, the bottleneck of electric output is the air breakdown on the interface of tribo-layers, which seriously restricts its further improvement. Herein, a strategy is adopted by designing a shielding layer to prevent air breakdown on the central surface of tribo-layers. And the negative effects of air breakdown on the edge of sliding layer are averted by increasing the shrouded area of tribo-layers on slider. Output charge of this shielding-layer and shrouded-tribo-area optimized ternary electrification layered triboelectric nanogenerator (SS-TEL-TENG) achieves 3.59-fold enhancement of traditional S-TENG and 1.76-fold enhancement of TEL-TENG. Furthermore, even at a very low speed of 30 rpm, output charge, current, and average power of the rotation-type SS-TEL-TENG reach 4.15 & mu;C, 74.9 & mu;A, and 25.4 mW (2.05 W m(-2) Hz(-1)), respectively. With such high-power output, 4248 LEDs can be lighted brightly by SS-TEL-TENG directly. The high-performance SS-TEL-TENG demonstrated in this work will have great applications for powering ubiquitous sensor network in the Internet of Things (IoT).