Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong, China.
Department of Electronic Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong, China.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2020 Dec 16;12(50):56060-56067. doi: 10.1021/acsami.0c17601. Epub 2020 Dec 2.
Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have obtained soaring interest due to their capability for environmental energy harvesting. However, as a harvester for green energy, the frequent adoption of the hardly degradable plastic films is not desirable. Here, we report a fully biodegradable TENG (FBD-TENG) that all elements are made from natural substances, and the utilization of plastic materials is avoided. The leaf cuticle and the inside conductive tissue are utilized as the tribo-material and electrode for one part in the FBD-TENG, and water droplets are employed as the counterpart. By using water droplets to bridge the originally disconnected components into a closed-loop electrical system, we successfully collect energy from the droplet impact onto a plant leaf. The electricity generation phenomenon and the working mechanism of the FBD-TENG have been investigated. Five kinds of plants, as well as rain water droplets, are employed to demonstrate the wide availability of the proposed approach. This study provides a strategy to utilize the pervasively presented electrostatic charges in nature in an eco-friendly way.
摩擦纳米发电机（TENG）因其环境能源收集能力而引起了广泛关注。然而，作为绿色能源的收集器，频繁采用难以降解的塑料薄膜是不可取的。在这里，我们报告了一种完全可生物降解的 TENG（FBD-TENG），它的所有元素都是由天然物质制成的，避免了塑料材料的使用。叶表皮和内部导电组织被用作 FBD-TENG 的摩擦材料和电极的一部分，而水滴则被用作配对物。通过使用水滴将原本断开的组件桥接成一个闭环电系统，我们成功地从水滴撞击植物叶片上收集能量。研究了 FBD-TENG 的发电现象和工作机制。使用五种植物以及雨水滴来证明所提出方法的广泛适用性。本研究提供了一种以环保的方式利用自然界中普遍存在的静电荷的策略。
