Based on Silicon-Gel Polymer Electrolyte Dielectric of Low Impedance Tribovoltaic Nanogenerator

As an innovative renewable energy harvester, the tribovoltaic nanogenerator (TVNG) with lower impedance and DC characteristics has attracted much attention. To alleviate the issues of severe wear for hard–hard semiconductor materials, here, a soft ion dielectric material and semiconductor TVNG based on n-Si/gel polymer electrolyte (GPE) (GPE-TVNG) is proposed. A solid ionic electric double layer (i-EDL) model is established to systematically explore the generation mechanism as well. Moreover, the proposed i-EDL model is verified by subsequent experiments, and the results manifest that the ion directed migration can improve the output performance of GPE-TVNG. The optimized GPE-TVNG has a short-circuit current of 26.5 μA and a low matched impedance of 60 kΩ, which is far lower than the previous reported internal resistance of Si-based TVNG (>100 kΩ). This study broadens the selection of TVNG materials and realizes the effective control of TVNG output.