A Nonmetallic Stretchable Nylon-Modified High Performance Triboelectric Nanogenerator for Energy Harvesting

As a new energy harvesting strategy, triboelectric nanogenerators which have a broad application prospect in collecting environmental energy, human body mechanical energy, and supplying power for low-power electronic devices, have attracted extensive attention. However, technology challenges still exist in the stretchability for the preparation of some high-performance triboelectric materials. In this work, a new strategy for nonmetallic nylon-modified triboelectric nanogenerators (NM-TENGs) is reported. Nylon is introduced as a high performance friction material to enhance the output performance of the stretchable TENG. The uniform matrix reduces the difficulty of heterogeneous integration and enhances the structural strength. The open-circuit voltage (V-OC) and short-circuit current (I-SC) of NM-TENG can reach up to 1.17 kV and 138 mu A, respectively. The instantaneous power density reaches 11.2 W m(-2) and the rectified output can directly light approximate to 480 LEDs. The transferred charge density is approximate to 100 mu C m(-2) in one cycle when charging the capacitor. In addition, a low-power electronic clock can be driven directly by the rectified signal without additional circuits. NM-TENG also has high enough strain rate and can be attached to the human body for energy harvesting effectively. This work provides a new idea for fabrication of stretchable TENGs and demonstrates their potential application.