Achieving Ultrarobust and Humidity-Resistant Triboelectric Nanogenerator by Dual-Capacitor Enhancement System

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) that can efficiently harvest ubiquitous mechanical energy provide a promising technology for the energy supply of intelligent electronic devices. However, the issues of low durability induced by wear and moisture sensibility of TENGs greatly limit their practical applications. Here, a no-wear dual-capacitor enhancement system (DCES) to simultaneously improve the service lifetime and electric performance of TENGs in a high humidity environment is proposed. The combination of low charge injection from lightly touched TENG and charge transfer in no-wear DCES can synchronously realize ultralow material wear and charge pumping up. Therefore, the dual-capacitor-enhanced TENG (DCE-TENG) achieves a long service life of at least 1 000 000 cycles with 15-fold enhancement of matched average power. Furthermore, owing to the humidity resistance of DCES, the output performance of DCE-TENG remains 95% of the initial value in 90% humidity. This work is expected to promote the commercial applications of TENGs.

Automated summary

By introducing a dual-capacitor enhancement system (DCES), the research successfully improves the electrical performance and service life of triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG) in high humidity environments, further promoting the commercial applications of TENG.