Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100083, China.
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology , Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0245, United States.
ACS Nano. 2015 Dec 22;9(12):12562-72. doi: 10.1021/acsnano.5b06372. Epub 2015 Nov 19.
Ocean waves are one of the most abundant energy sources on earth, but harvesting such energy is rather challenging due to various limitations of current technologies. Recently, networks formed by triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) have been proposed as a promising technology for harvesting water wave energy. In this work, a basic unit for the TENG network was studied and optimized, which has a box structure composed of walls made of TENG composed of a wavy-structured Cu-Kapton-Cu film and two FEP thin films, with a metal ball enclosed inside. By combination of the theoretical calculations and experimental studies, the output performances of the TENG unit were investigated for various structural parameters, such as the size, mass, or number of the metal balls. From the viewpoint of theory, the output characteristics of TENG during its collision with the ball were numerically calculated by the finite element method and interpolation method, and there exists an optimum ball size or mass to reach maximized output power and electric energy. Moreover, the theoretical results were well verified by the experimental tests. The present work could provide guidance for structural optimization of wavy-structured TENGs for effectively harvesting water wave energy toward the dream of large-scale blue energy.
海浪是地球上最丰富的能源之一，但由于当前技术的各种限制，这种能源的利用颇具挑战性。最近，由摩擦纳米发电机 (TENG) 组成的网络被提出作为一种有前途的水波波能收集技术。在这项工作中，研究并优化了 TENG 网络的基本单元，它具有一个由 TENG 组成的盒式结构，这些 TENG 由波浪结构的 Cu-Kapton-Cu 薄膜和两个 FEP 薄膜组成，内部封闭有一个金属球。通过理论计算和实验研究的结合，研究了 TENG 单元在各种结构参数（如金属球的大小、质量或数量）下的输出性能。从理论角度来看，通过有限元法和插值法对 TENG 与球碰撞时的输出特性进行了数值计算，存在一个最佳的球大小或质量，以达到最大的输出功率和电能。此外，理论结果得到了实验测试的很好验证。本工作为波浪结构 TENG 的结构优化提供了指导，有助于实现大规模蓝色能源的水波波能有效收集这一梦想。
