Nanowires for Triboelectric Nanogenerators

Abstract

Future personal electronic systems will follow a trend of lightweight, miniaturization, portability, biocompatibility, body conformability, multifunctionality, and so forth. Such next-generation multifunctional electronic modules will be constituted by large numbers of small functional elements and sensors. As the growing requirement for such functional electronics, portable power sources have become more and more important in our daily life. A typical example is the widespread smart cell phone. Probably, most people have the experiences that you need your cell phone for some cases, but it had been run out of batteries. Those experiences will be more and more frequent as your cell phone becomes more and more smart and functional.

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) are technologies that can convert mechanical energy into electrical energy based on triboelectrification effect. Such technologies have attracted great attention due to their promising potential in efficiently collecting environment mechanical energy for personal electronics and self-powered sensors. TENGs constructed based on nanowires possess several important attributes such as flexibility, stretchability, transparency, as well as low cost in both fabrication and materials. These features enable to boost the applications of flexible/stretchable electronics, organic optoelectronics, and biomedical and wearable electronics. The focus of this chapter is about the brief introduction of the nanowires applied in flexible TENGs to scavenge the ubiquitous mechanical energy and brief discussion of their applications in harvesting human motion energy and self-powered tactile sensors.