Acid- and Alkali-Resistant and High-Performance Cellulose Paper-Based Triboelectric Nanogenerator by Controlling the Surface Hydrophobicity

Cellulose paper-based triboelectric nanogenerators (CPTENGs) have gained considerable attention because they are low-cost, lightweight, flexible, and environmentally friendly. However, the poor triboelectric property and hydrophobicity of cellulose paper still limit the development of high-performance CPTENGs. In this work, octadecylamine (ODA) has been introduced onto cellulose fibers to prepare hydrophobic cellulose paper (HCP) by means of polydopamine (PDA) which can react with ODA and hydrogen bond with cellulose. Benefiting from the ODA and PDA co-modification, HCP exhibits excellent triboelectric property, surface roughness, and hydrophobicity; moreover, the HCP exhibits remarkable resistance to acids and alkalis. In addition, an HCP-based TENG (HCPTENG) shows an open-circuit voltage (VOC) of 237.8 V and a short-circuit current (ISC) of 4.2 μA, which are higher than those of the most of cellulose paper-based TENGs. More importantly, the HCPTENG shows great output performance stability when treated with water, acids, and alkalis. The HCPTENG with a retractable and collapsible lantern structure can harvest energy from human movement and detect the foot motion like walking and running and hand flapping.