A High Output Wool Felt-based Double-ring Triboelectric Nanogenerator with Durability and Humidity Resistance for Ocean Navigation

Abstract

Ocean navigation plays a critical role in economic and cultural exchanges, and access to safe and healthy drinking water is essential to ensure the safety of ocean navigation. The triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) are considered promising power supplies for drinking water disinfection and quality detection. However, poor stability at high humidity and after long-term operation, and low output need to be addressed. Here, wool felt-based double-ring TENG (WD-TENG) that harvests wind energy and exhibits excellent durability and humidity resistance is proposed. An ultrahigh average power density per pulse per torque of 2.71 W/N·m³·Hz is achieved due to wool's strong charge-binding capacity and double-ring structure. Characterization of wool felt and exploratory experiments demonstrate that its fluffy structure and animal protein components enable WD-TENG to maintain stable output after 1.8×10⁶ cycles and at 90% relative humidity. For UV water disinfection powered by outer-ring TENG (OR-TENG), optimizing the air gap of 0.4 mm in the circuit effectively enhances the disinfection efficiency to 6-log removal at 34 ml/min. Both water quality detection and wind speed monitoring systems work simultaneously and are powered by inner-ring TENG (IR-TENG). The I_SC is increased 10-fold through a simple power management circuit, allowing the water quality detection system to work for 20 s after charging for 25 s. Meanwhile, wind speed can be monitored in real-time by analyzing the peak number of the output voltage. This work advances the development of TENGs with high output, durability, and humidity resistance and provides a fundamental technology for ocean navigation.