Design and Experimental Analysis of Triboelectric Energy Harvester with In-house Set-up

Triboelectric effect has gained huge popularity in the field of energy harvesting as well as sensing in various potential applications. In this paper, we have designed and analyzed a vertical contact separation based triboelectric energy harvesting structure and further validated it through experimentation. It has been observed that an open circuit voltage of 40 V is obtained through simulation and analysis for a specific AI-FEP (Aluminium-Fluorinated Ethylene Propylene) based tribo structure. For experimental validation, a low cost loudspeaker-based in-house test set-up has been developed, and the same tribo structure is designed, assembled and characterized. Experimentally an open circuit voltage of 41.2 V is observed for the tribo structure, which agrees well with the simulation results. Few other material combinations for triboharvester are explored as well and validated experimentally. This structure can be used for vibration sensing as well, including human motion.