Triboelectric Nanogenerator With Enhanced Performance via an Optimized Low Permittivity Substrate

With electrical power generated from mechanical contact, triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) offer a promising route to realizing self-powered sensors. For effective usage, it is important to improve their limited power range (0.1–100 mW/cm
²
) and this can be achieved by optimizing the output performance. Among the factors that confer higher performance are materials with a strong triboelectric effect together with low permittivity, but it is challenging to optimize both within a single material. This paper presents a solution to this challenge by optimizing a low permittivity substrate beneath the tribo-contact layer. Results are simulated over a range of substrate permittivities. The open circuit voltage is found to increase by a factor of 1.6 in moving from PVDF to the lower permittivity PTFE. Two TENG devices have been fabricated with
$100\boldsymbol {\mu m}$
PET and PTFE substrates to compare performance. The experiments confirm that lowering the substrate dielectric constant (i.e. PET to PTFE) raises the open circuit voltage in line with simulation predictions.