Rational TENG arrays as a panel for harvesting large-scale raindrop energy
Zong Li, Bin Cao, Zhonghao Zhang, Liming Wang, Zhong Lin Wang
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 cm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> , the peak power output of BAGs reached 200 W/m <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> , which is remarkable for paving a potential industrial approach for effective harvesting raindrop energy at a large scale.