Design and output performance of vibration energy harvesting triboelectric nanogenerator

With the advent of global warming and energy crisis, the search for renewable energy to reduce carbon emissions has become one of the most urgent challenges. Ithas become a research hotspot to collect or harvest various mechanical energy in nature and convert it into electric energy. Vibration is a common form of mechanical movement in our daily life. It is visible both on most working machines and in nature and is a type of potential energy. There are several methods that can convert such mechanical energy into electric energy. Triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) based on the principle of contact electrification and electrostatic induction which first appeared in 2012 by Zhonglin Wang provides a feasible method of efficiently collecting the vibrational energy with different vibrating frequencies. In this paper, a contact-separation mode of TENG is designed and implemented. The voltage- quantity of charge- distance(V-Q-x)relation of TENG is calculated. During the experiment, the factors such as load resistance, vibration frequency, etc. which affect the output performance, are considered and analyzed. An electrically driven crank-connecting rod mechanism is employed to provide the vibration source with adjustable frequency in a range of 1-6 Hz. The result shows that the amount of charge transfer in each working cycle remains almost unchanged, while the voltage and current increase with frequency increasing. When the frequency is 5 Hz, the best power matching resistance of the TENG is about 33 MΩ and the maximum output power reaches 0.5 mW. For a further study, a COMSOL software is used to simulate the distribution rule and variation rule of the electric potential in the contact-separation process, then the theoretical charge density and the experimental charge density on the polymer surface are compared and analyzed in order to provide theoretical and practical support for the design of TENG with collected vibration energy and self-powered vibration sensor. The result shows that the electric potential is proportional to the distance between two friction layers. While as the distance between two friction layers increases, the electric potential and the charge density both show a tendency to concentrate in the middle of the friction layer. The huge difference between experimental result and the simulation predicts thatmuch work should be done continually to improve the output of the TENG. Finally, the obtained results conduce to understanding the contact electrification and electrostatic induction mechanism and also provide a new method of harvesting the vibration energy.