Investigation of contact electrification based broadband energy harvesting mechanism using elastic PDMS microstructures

Triboelectric energy harvesting has recently garnered a lot of interest because of its easy fabrication and high power output. Contact electrification depends on the chemical properties of contacting materials. Another important factor in contact electrification mechanism is surfaces' elastic and topographical characteristics. One of the biggest limitations of resonant mechanism based devices is their narrow operating bandwidth. This paper presents a broadband mechanism which utilizes stiffness induced in the cantilever motion due to contact between two triboelectric surfaces. We have conducted experiments using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) micropad patterns to study the effect of micropad array configuration on the performance of triboelectric energy harvesting devices. The maximum power output measured from the device was observed to be 0.69 μW at an acceleration of 1 g. Due to the non-linearity introduced by contact separation mechanism, the bandwidth of the triboelectric energy harvester was observed to be increased by 63% at an acceleration level of 1 g. A hybrid energy harvesting mechanism has also been demonstrated by compounding the triboelectric energy harvester with a piezoelectric bimorph. (paper)