Triboelectric nanogenerators from reused plastic: An approach for vehicle security alarming and tire motion monitoring in rover

The fast urbanization and speedy growth of automobiles throughout the globe requires the development of a highly reliable vehicle security system to protect against vehicle crime. Similarly, the interest in space exploration increases rapidly in many of the countries, and the rover used in space exploration operates on solar power with 6 wheels for its movement. So, it is highly desirable to find an energy harvester as well as motion tracker in space exploration vehicles. Herein, a vehicle security alert system and tire motion signaling and harvesting system are developed using a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) with good reliability and cheap manufacturing cost. The TENG device is made by reusing the waste plastic bottle made of PET, which serves as the substrate for housing the triboelectric active layers. The active layers composed of sandpaper made roughness created PBAT (Polybutylene adipate terephthalate, commercially available as Ecoflex-0030) film as a negative layer, copper film as a positive layer, and electrodes. A Kapton layer is introduced at the bottom of the Ecoflex film as a charge accumulation layer. The entire layers with the reused plastic substrate made the device as an eye-shaped TENG device (EYE-TENG). The device generates a maximum electrical output of voltage and current ~250 V and ~25 µA respectively with a maximum instantaneous peak power density of ~16 µW/Cm2. Furthermore, the device exhibits long term stability, durability and has potential to light up 100 LEDs. The device also demonstrates its capability is scavenging the biomechanical energy by hand and leg tapping at fast and slow motions. After that, the device was used to perform a vehicle security alarming system by placing into the vehicle tire and alarming with the help of an Arduino controller and Bluetooth module. The studies and results prove that the EYE-TENG is capable of acting as a sustainable power source as well as an alarming system and can be used as potential device in the future robotics, automobile industries, tire motion monitoring in rovers and aerospace electronics applications.