High-performance triboelectric nanogenerator based on electrospun PVDF-graphene nanosheet composite nanofibers for energy harvesting

Abstract As a promising sustainable power source for intelligent electronics, triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) has attracted remarkable attention and various strategies have been sought to improve its output performance. However, most of these approaches for triboelectric materials optimization only focus on either chemical composition modulation or surface microstructure fabrication. In this work, both aspects are considered and an effective strategy is proposed to construct high performance TENGs based on polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) via graphene nanosheets incorporation in conjunction with electrospinning technology. Hence, a 20 × 20 mm2 TENG comprising of PVDF/G nanofibers and polyamide-6 (PA6) films demonstrates superior triboelectric performance with an output voltage of ~1511 V, a short-circuit current density of ~189 mA m−2, and a maximum peak power density of ~130.2 W m−2, nearly eight times higher than that of the PVDF-PA6 TENG. Additionally, under impedance matching condition, the PVDF/G-PA6 TENG can harvest ~74.13 μJ energy per cycle, with a time-averaged output power density of 926.65 mW m−2. Detail investigation reveals that both composition modulation with graphene and nanofiber structure fabricated through electrospinning contribute to the triboelectric performance enhancement of PVDF/G NF films. This work provides an effective strategy of simultaneously optimizing the chemical composition and surface microstructure of triboelectric materials to significantly improve the output performance of TENGs, and to further promote the widespread application of TENGs.