An omnidirectional stretchable hyper-elastic dielectric composed triboelectric textile for energy harvesting

Textile-based triboelectric nanogenerators (T-TENGs) have been favorable devices to harvest human motion energy because of their excellent flexibility and high efficiency at low frequency. However, T-TENGs integrated with the conventional composite electrodes will suffer serious degradation on conductivity under stretching state. Herein, an omnidirectional stretchable triboelectric textile based on liquid metal (LM) electrodes has been proposed. By virtue of the excellent liquidity of LM and high stretchability of Ecoflex film, the triboelectric textile shows an ultimate elongation of 660% and maintains a small resistance (0.678 Omega) under 200% stretching. Additionally, by introducing TiO2 particles into the Ecoflex to improve the dielectric constant, the triboelectric textile obtained a similar to 40% growth on short-circuit current and generated a high peak-peak power density of 15.4 W/m(2) at 3 Hz and 30 N. Based on the excellent output performance, the triboelectric textile can continuously drive low-power electronics under palm flapping, ensuring the feasibility for energy harvesting from human motion.

Automated summary

The study introduces a novel liquid metal electrode-based triboelectric textile with high stretchability and low resistance, providing efficient energy harvesting from human motion at low frequencies.