Rational TENG arrays as a panel for harvesting large-scale raindrop energy

Abstract

Raindrops contain abundant renewable energy including both kinetic energy and electrostatic energy, and how to effectively harvest it becomes a hot research topic. Recently, a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) using liquid–solid contact electrification has been demonstrated for achieving an ultra-high instantaneous power output. However, when harvesting the energy from the dense raindrops instead of a single droplet, a more rational structure to eliminate the mutual influence of individual generation units is needed for maximize the output. In this work, a “solar panel-like” bridge array generators (BAGs) is proposed. By adopting array lower electrodes (ALE) and bridge reflux structure (BRS), BAGs could minimize the sharp drop in the peak power output for large-scale energy harvesting devices. When the area of the raindrop energy harvesting device is 15 × 15 cm2, the peak power output of BAGs reached 200 W/m2, which is remarkable for paving a potential industrial approach for effective harvesting raindrop energy at a large scale.

Keywords

• triboelectric nanogenerator (teng)
• droplet
• energy harvesting
• bridge array generators (bags)