ENHANCING THE EFFICIENCY OF TRIBOELECTRIC NANOGENERATOR BY ELECTROSTATIC INDUCTION

Abstract

The present work aims to enhance the efficiency of the triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) by electrostatic induction. The two surfaces of the TENG were made of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and polyamide (PA) due to their location in the triboelectric series where contact and separation as well sliding of two materials were carried out. Electrostatic induction was proposed to insert a coil of insulated copper wires wrapped on the surface of hollow box, representing the frame of the coil, of different height under the surface of PTFE. The voltage difference between PTFE film coating insulated copper wire coil and PA was measured. It was found that voltage remarkably increased up to maximum then drastically decreased with increasing the height of the frame containing the copper coil. Based on the experimental observation, it seems that induction of the copper coil is the reason for the voltage increase due the induced electric field. The significant voltage increase depends directly on the electric field that is much influenced by the height of the hollow box containing the coil. Besides, transverse sliding showed the highest voltage, while contact and separation displayed the lowest voltage values. Inserting steel sheet under PA surface, significantly increased the voltage due to the increase of the magnetic field. Using two layers of the coil offered the highest voltage values, then as the number of layers increased, voltage decreased.