Micro-Fabrication Methods and Experimentation of Liquid-Solid Triboelectric Nanogenerators

Abstract

This study is an exploration of the liquid-solid electrication phenomena in tribo-electric nanogenerator devices, its fabrication and assembly, as well as notable resultsand analysis on all aspects of the nanogenerator device. Energy harvesting in water-based environments is ideal because the harvester can be shown to generate sucientenergy provided it is scaled for the application. As a renewable energy source, it isdesirable to incorporate for remote ocean-based sensors that demand on-site energy.These devices are currently technically dicult to produce and require specializedclean room and chemical altering equipment. Due to the complex nature of the cur-rent fabrication method, this work also explores an alternate method for fabrication ofthe triboelectric layers for use in water-based environments. Polymer nanowire mod-ications to increase the contact area with liquid are shown to moderately improvethe overall performance using specic chemical gases during the etching process. Cir-cuitry for optimizing these devices in building up and storing energy to power severalLEDs has merit, but failed in testing after successive attempts. With continued re-search and design improvement, triboelectric nanogenerator energy harvesters couldprove useful in a wide variety of sensor applications.