School of Advanced Materials Science and Engineering and ‡SKKU Advanced Institute of Nanotechnology, Sungkyunkwan University , Suwon 440-746, Republic of Korea.
ACS Nano. 2016 Jul 26;10(7):6429-32. doi: 10.1021/acsnano.6b04213. Epub 2016 Jul 13.
Blue energy in the form of ocean waves offers an enormous energy resource. However, it has yet to be fully exploited in order to make it available for the use of mankind. Blue energy harvesting is a challenging task as the kinetic energy from ocean waves is irregular in amplitude and is at low frequencies. Though electromagnetic generators (EMGs) are well-known for harvesting mechanical kinetic energies, they have a crucial limitation for blue energy conversion. Indeed, the output voltage of EMGs can be impractically low at the low frequencies of ocean waves. In contrast, triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) are highly suitable for blue energy harvesting as they can effectively harvest mechanical energies from low frequencies (<1 Hz) to relatively high frequencies (∼kHz) and are also low-cost, lightweight, and easy to fabricate. Several important steps have been taken by Wang's group to develop TENG technology for blue energy harvesting. In this Perspective, we describe some of the recent progress and also address concerns related to durable packaging of TENGs in consideration of harsh marine environments and power management for an efficient power transfer and distribution for commercial applications.
蓝色能源以波浪的形式提供了巨大的能源资源。然而，为了使其可供人类使用，它尚未得到充分开发。蓝色能源采集是一项具有挑战性的任务，因为来自海浪的动能在幅度上是不规则的，并且处于低频。尽管电磁发电机 (EMG) 是众所周知的用于采集机械动能的设备，但它们在蓝色能源转换方面存在关键限制。实际上，在海浪的低频下，EMG 的输出电压可能非常低。相比之下，摩擦纳米发电机 (TENG) 非常适合蓝色能源采集，因为它们可以有效地从低频 (<1 Hz) 到相对较高的频率 (∼kHz) 采集机械能，并且成本低、重量轻、易于制造。Wang 等人的小组已经采取了几个重要步骤来开发用于蓝色能源采集的 TENG 技术。在本观点中，我们描述了一些最新进展，并考虑到恶劣的海洋环境以及用于高效能量传输和分配的能量管理，解决了与 TENG 耐用包装相关的问题，以用于商业应用。
