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A PDMS-Al Triboelectric Nanogenerator Using Two-Pulse Laser to Enhance Effective Contact Area and Its Application
You-Jun Huang1, Chi-Hung Tsai1, Chia-Wei Hung1
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan.
Polymers
|December 17, 2024
Summary
A new two-pulse laser ablation method quickly creates high-aspect-ratio microneedles for triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs). This cost-effective technique significantly boosts TENG energy harvesting performance for self-powered devices.
Area of Science:
- Materials Science
- Energy Harvesting
- Nanotechnology
Background:
- Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) convert mechanical energy to electrical energy via tribology.
- Current methods for fabricating TENG tribo-layers use expensive, time-consuming semiconductor processes.
- Enhancing contact area in TENGs is crucial for improving energy output.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop a rapid, low-cost method for producing high-aspect-ratio (HAR) microneedle structures for TENG triboelectric layers.
- To investigate the performance enhancement of TENGs utilizing microneedle structures fabricated by a novel two-pulse laser ablation technique.
Main Methods:
- Fabrication of a polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) mold with HAR microneedles using two-pulse CO2 laser ablation.
- Casting polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) onto the fabricated mold to create microneedle-PDMS (MN-PDMS) triboelectric layers.
- Assembly of MN-PDMS layers with aluminum (Al) sheets to form TENG devices for performance testing.
Main Results:
- The two-pulse laser ablation method produced microneedles with 1.88 times higher aspect ratio compared to single-pulse ablation.
- The resulting MN-PDMS-Al TENG demonstrated significantly enhanced performance: 1.63x higher open-circuit voltage (Voc), 1.92x higher short-circuit current (Isc), and 3.69x higher output power compared to flat PDMS-Al TENG.
- Performance improvements were also observed compared to TENGs fabricated using single-pulse ablation.
Conclusions:
- The proposed two-pulse laser ablation and polymer casting method offers a feasible and cost-effective approach for fabricating efficient TENG triboelectric layers.
- This technique substantially enhances TENG output performance, showing great potential for applications in self-powered systems and sustainable energy solutions.
