High-Performance Triboelectric Nanogenerator by New Polymeric Negative Charged Materials

초록

The triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is one of the most prospective ways for energy harvesting technology due to its high energy density. Although triboelectricity is highly dependent on materials, relatively less attention has been paid to the material design in comparison with the device design. Here, we introduce a new strategy for synthesis of an extremely negative triboelectric polymer by blending fluorine-rich polymer, poly(2,3,4,5,6-pentafluorostyrene) (PPFS) along with polymeric sulfur, which indicate significantly higher electron affinity than that of carbon backbone-based polymers. PPFS is added in-situ during the inverse vulcanization of elemental sulfur by 1,3-diisopropenylbenzene (DIB). Polymer blends were ground and hot-pressed into films, resulting in phase-separation of hydrophobic PPFS from polymeric sulfur. The PPFS molecules are highly localized at the air-interface during the phase separation, providing long-term stable 8-fold and 9-fold increase in triboelectric voltages and currents, respectively, in comparison with commercial PTFE. This facile phase-separation method blazes the trail to synthesize high performance triboelectric polymeric materials at low-cost.