Humidity-resisting triboelectric nanogenerator for high performance biomechanical energy harvesting

With the rapid advancement of modern technology, wearable electronic devices become more and more indispensable to daily life. However, powering them in a stable and sustainable manner remains a challenge and highly desired. In this work, we proposed a humidity-resisting triboelectric nanogenerator (HR-TENG) to harvest energy from human biomechanical movements for wearable electronics. The electrospun nanofibrous membranes were rationally tailored to eliminate the adverse effects of water vapor on the electrical output and construct a high-performance humidity-resisting triboelectric nanogenerator. It could work with improved adaptability to the environmental humidity caused by human perspiration during sport. With human biomechanical motions, such as hand tapping, the wearable HR-TENG can respectively deliver a current and voltage output up to 28 mu A and 345 V, corresponding to a power density of 1.3 W/m(2) under a relative humidity 55%. It was also demonstrated to sustainably power an electronic watch, a commercial calculator, a thermal meter and light up about 400 LEDs by harvesting the biomechanical energy from human movements under different ambient humidity. And its electrical output was still at a relatively high level when the relative humidity was increased from 30% to 90%. Given a collection of compelling features of being wearable, flexible and cost-effective, the HR-TENG could be utilized as a sustainable power source to drive wearable electronics during human sport even with heavy perspiration.