A structural bionic design: From electric organs to systematic triboelectric generators

Bioelectricity and triboelectrification are well-known and widely existing phenomena in nature, and the investigation of their mechanisms and utilizations has attracted much attention for a long time. As traditional investigations suggested, the mechanism of electric organs is that the electrocytes are lined up so a current of ions can flow through them, and thus they are stacked in a sequence so that each one adds up to form a potential difference. For varieties of triboelectric generators, most of them feature extremely high voltage but limited current, which is the major challenge to pracitcal utilization. Here, we present a structural bionic design based on the microstructure of electric organs to improve the output current of systematic triboelectric generators. This study correlating electric organs and triboelectric generators not only benefits the practical use of systematic triboelectric generators for energy harvesting, but also offers a new approach to imitate more compositive and tunable electronic devices from biological structures. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.