Revealing the Surface Topography Influence and Fundamental Operating Mechanism on Semiconductor–Semiconductor-Based Tribovoltaic Effect

Tribovoltaic effect is an emerging phenomenon occurring between two materials, which can generate direct current (DC) rather than alternate current (AC) at the contact interface. Though the existence of a tribovoltaic effect indeed brings up a new method for power supply of critical sensors using the Internet of Things technology, the wear and damage of tribovoltaic materials related to the surface topography during the sliding process is still nonnegligible. In this work, the influence of surface topography on the tribovoltaic effect between semiconductors is investigated by means of a lateral sliding mode triboelectric nanogenerator composed of ZnO and Si (ZnO/Si LS-TENG). Results show that the increase of effective area has a great improvement on the output of the tribovoltaic effect. In addition, a novel operating mechanism and theoretical model based on the energy band theory are proposed to illustrate the semiconductor–semiconductor tribovoltaic effect clearly.