Liquid-Metal Electrode for High-Performance Triboelectric Nanogenerator at an Instantaneous Energy Conversion Efficiency of 70.6%

Harvesting ambient mechanical energy is a key technology for realizing self-powered electronics, which has tremendous applications in wireless sensing networks, implantable devices, portable electronics, etc. The currently reported triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) mainly uses solid materials, so that the contact between the two layers cannot be 100% with considering the roughness of the surfaces, which greatly reduces the total charge density that can be transferred and thus the total energy conversion efficiency. In this work, a liquid-metal-based triboelectric nanogenerator (LM-TENG) is developed for high power generation through conversion of mechanical energy, which allows a total contact between the metal and the dielectric. Due to that the liquid-solid contact induces large contacting surface and its shape adaptive with the polymer thin films, the LM-TENG exhibits a high output charge density of 430 mu C m(-2), which is four to five times of that using a solid thin film electrode. And its power density reaches 6.7 W m(-2) and 133 kW m(-3). More importantly, the instantaneous energy conversion efficiency is demonstrated to be as high as 70.6%. This provides a new approach for improving the performance of the TENG for special applications. Furthermore, the liquid easily fluctuates, which makes the LM-TENG inherently suitable for vibration energy harvesting.