MXene Based Triboelectric Nanogenerator on Fabric Platform for Wearable Energy Harvesting Applications

A MXene based frication layer was developed on flexible and conformable fabric platform for wearable triboelectric based energy harvesting applications. The triboelectric energy harvester consists of MXene based friction layer as tribo-negative layer, fluorinated ethylene polymer (FEP) as tribo-positive layer and two fabric–based conductive electrodes. The fabric electrodes were fabricated by depositing a silver (Ag) conductive layer, using screen-printing process, on thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) film attached to fabric. Tribo-negative layer was fabricated by synthesizing MXene through Lewis acidic etching process from Titanium silicon carbide (Ti
3
SiC
2
). The synthesized MXene was then mixed with deionized water and binder phase poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT: PSS) in the ratio of 70:20:10 to form a viscous slurry for coating on the TPU film. Tribo-positive layer was fabricated by simply attaching the FEP to TPU using heat-melt process. The performance of MXene based triboelectric nano generator was demonstrated by investigating the open-circuit voltage (OCV), short-circuit current (I
sc
), and maximum power (P
max
) generated for different load resistance. A maximum OCV of 49 V
p-p
, I
sc
of
$25\ \mu\mathrm{A}$
, and a P
max
of
$335\ \mu\mathrm{W}$
.