New flexible triboelectric nanogenerator

Just imagine one day you can leave the charger at home and top up your phone battery with your body movements, doesn’t it sound great? PING Jianfeng, a researcher in the College of Biosystems Engineering and Food Science, published an article entitled “All-electrospun flexible triboelectric nanogenerator based on metallic Mxene nanosheets” in the February 20 issue of Nano Energy. His research makes us a step closer to that goal. In this work, Mxene nanosheets are innovatively introduced into the electrospinning field to fabricate the nanofibers-based triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG). This pioneering method leads to a flexible and high-performance TENG with an instantaneously maximum peak power density of 1087.6 mW/m2 and the load resistance of 5.0 MΩ. Moreover, beyond harvesting electrical power, the fabricated TENG can be used for real-time monitoring of body motion. The developed TENG here is used to power electrowetting on dielectric (EWOD) chip to activate droplet transport.   

Flowchart of building the nanofibers-based TENG

Given its remarkable triboelectric performance, ease of large-scale manufacturing, and environmental-friendliness, this MXene-based all-electrospun TENG holds great promise in the development of practical, flexible, and self-powered electronic devices that harvest external mechanical energy.