Electrically conductive fabric based stretchable triboelectric energy harvester

Abstract

Stretchable conductive fabric-based triboelectric generator (TENG), to develop breathing/chest band for harvesting energy at low frequency has been developed. Stretchable conductive nylon-fabric and carbon-based elastomer composites were used as electrodes. During this work, film casting technique was implemented and combination of different materials, such as, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)/ polyurethane (PU) were tested as triboelectric layers. The process was compatible with large scale fabrication. At low operation frequency of 1.0±0.1 Hz for the strain of 13±1.5%, developed TENGs provide output power densities of 0.06 μW/cm2 and 0.11 μW/cm2 for the load resistance of 100 MΩ, and energy density of 0.19±0.03 nJ/cm2/cycle and 0.08±0.01 nJ/cm2/cycle for the use of capacitor of 2.2 μF, for PDMS-PTFE and PDMS-PU based TENGs respectively.