Coupling effects of carbon fibers on the electrification and wear performance of sliding mode triboelectric nanogenerators

Abstract

This paper introduces carbon fibers into STENG, and investigates the coupling effects of carbon fibers on electrification and wear performance through electrification-wear coupling models and electrification-wear synchronous tests. It is shown that compared to STENG without carbon fibers, STENG with 0.2 wt% carbon fibers exhibits a 90.36 % increase in voltage and a 26.73 % decrease in wear rate. Carbon fibers increase the voltage through increasing the capacitance of the polymer layer, and reduce the transfer film coverage and thus the voltage reduction induced by transfer films. Meanwhile, carbon fibers increase the hardness of the polymer layer and thus reduce plowing and pitting. Although the increase of electrostatic force caused by carbon fibers aggravates wear, the aggravation is slight and can be ignored.