Metal Island Structure as a Power Booster for High‐Performance Triboelectric Nanogenerators

Abstract The development of the Internet of Things requires the availability of compact and efficient power sources for the supply of autonomous systems. In recent times, electromechanical transduction devices like triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have gained strong attention as they permit simple, robust, and cost‐effective techniques. However, TENGs generally do not achieve the electrical power density required for the targeted applications, and the challenges of optimization are therefore to increase their generated power density. In this work, a multilayer flexible composite structure is developed by employing an insulator–metal–insulator island architecture in place of a single insulator material to accumulate and store the charges created by triboelectrification. This increase in stored charges has a strong effect in inducing free charges on the electrodes resulting in a maximum output power density of 4.8 W m −2 , which is ≈150‐fold increase compared to the structure without metal inclusions. The results demonstrate a maximum charge density of 1076.56 µC m −2 , which is to the knowledge, the best charge density value ever reported for TENGs in ambient working conditions. Therefore, this work proposes a new direction to significantly increase the electrical power density in obtaining high‐performance triboelectric nanogenerators attractive to future applications for active sensors and portable electronics.