Green triboelectric nanogenerator based on waste polymers for electrophoretic deposition of titania nanoparticles

Abstract Nowadays, with the development of electronic devices and the internet of things (IoT), there is a growing demand for an available, eco-friendly and endless power supply. Triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), which converts wasted mechanical energy to electricity, is an alternative to batteries for power generation. TENGs are usually fabricated from polymers, and there are already great quantities of waste polymers in the environment that concern animals, wildlife and humans. Therefore, in this work, several eco-friendly, simple and low-cost TENGs were crafted using waste polymers like polyurethane foam (PU), expanded polystyrene (PS), polypropylene (PP), polyethylene foam (PE) and melamine formaldehyde foam (MF) without performing any physical or chemical functionalization on them. Finite element analysis was performed for each TENG and simulation results supported our experimental findings. Among these TENGs, voltage and power density of 1830 V and 96.68 mW/cm2 were achieved over a 3 × 3 cm2 area of M-TENG. This TENG could turn on 100 commercial blue light LED. The TENG with Melamine formaldehyde foam as a tribo-positive layer (M-TENG) also showed high mechanical robustness and its output did not change after 10,000 contact and separation cycles. To examine M-TENG utilization for high voltage practical application, M-TENG was used as a power source of electrophoretic deposition. The obtained high-quality titanium dioxide coating was uniform with no microcracks.