FABRICATION AND UTILIZATION OF ZINC OXIDE NANOFIBRES FOR SEMICONDUCTORS OF PHOTOVOLTAICAND PIEZOELECTRIC-BASED HYBRID GENERATORS

Abstract

The objective of this study is to develop and test hybrid generators harvesting both solar and mechanical energy. The hybrid generators work using photovoltaic- and piezoelectric-principles, where the active semiconductors were ZnO nanofibres synthesized by electrospinning at various feed rates of precursor. The results show that the crystallinity, crystalline size, fibre size, and fibre uniformity examined by X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy were strongly affected by changing the solution flow rate among 2, 4, 6, and 8 μL/min. Meanwhile, the voltage and power generated from the hybrid generators were influenced by the crystalline quality and morphology of the ZnO fibres. The highest voltages of photovoltaic- and piezoelectric-based hybrid generators were 507 and 36.3 mV, respectively. In addition, the maximum power values of photovoltaic- and piezoelectric-based generators were 706.72 μW/cm² and 49.6 nW/cm², respectively. Therefore, hybrid generators are of interest for fabrication into self-power devices.

Keywords

• Nanofibre
• Semiconductors
• Piezoelectric
• Photovoltaic
• Hybrid nanogenerator