Title: Performance enhancement of the triboelectric energy harvester by forming rough surface polymer film using poly-dimethyl-siloxane +25 wt% water solution

Authors: Amit Sharma; Poonam Agarwal

Addresses: Microsystems Lab, School of Computer and Systems Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 110067, India ' Microsystems Lab, School of Computer and Systems Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi-110067, India

Abstract: In this paper, an experimental study of performance enhancement of the triboelectric energy harvester (TEH) by using rough surface poly-dimethyl-siloxane (PDMS) polymer film as one of the tribo layer has been presented. A parallel plate vertical-separation mode type TEH has been fabricated with rough surface morphology PDMS polymer film. Rough surface morphology is formed by spin coating diluted PDMS formed of Dow Corning 10:1 PDMS solution +25wt% water on the FR4 PCB board. FR4 substrate with single side copper clad has been utilised to realise bottom electrode. A cantilever structure is implemented utilising 50 μm thin copper foil, as top electrode, attached beneath a Kapton film. The device performance measurements showed the peak output voltage of 39.69 V and peak to peak voltage of 53.75 V. As a proof of concept, self-powered light emitting diodes (LED) system with 26 serially connected LEDs has been demonstrated with manual tapping on the TEH device.

Keywords: triboelectric; tribo-pair; energy harvester; poly-dimethyl-siloxane; PDMS; self-powered.

DOI: 10.1504/IJDSSS.2020.106071

International Journal of Digital Signals and Smart Systems, 2020 Vol.4 No.1/2/3, pp.40 - 49

Received: 11 Jan 2019
Accepted: 22 May 2019
Published online: 27 Mar 2020 *