Performance Improvement and Application of Degradable Poly-<scp>l</scp>-lactide and Yttrium-Doped Zinc Oxide Hybrid Films for Energy Harvesting
Xiuzi Che, Yongbo Fan, Yao Su, Yuanbiao Gong, Qinghua Guo, Yafei Feng, Dengwei Hu, Weijia Wang, Huiqing Fan
Abstract
Piezoelectric nanogenerators (PENGs) are booming for energy collection and wearable energy supply as one of the next generations of green energy-harvesting devices. Balancing the output, safety, degradation, and cost is the key to solving the bottleneck of PENG application. In this regard, yttrium (Y)-doped zinc oxide (ZnO) (Y-ZnO) was synthesized and embedded into polylactide (PLLA) for developing degradable piezoelectric composite films with an enhanced energy-harvesting performance. The synthesized Y-ZnO exhibits high piezoelectric properties benefiting from the stronger polarity of the Y–O bond and regulation of oxygen vacancy concentration, which improve the output performance of the composite film with Y-ZnO and PLLA (Y-Z-PLLA). The obtained open-circuit voltage ( V oc ), short-circuit current ( I sc ), and instantaneous power density of the optimized Y-Z-PLLA PENG reach 17.52 V, 2.45 μA, and 1.76 μW/cm 2, respectively. The proposed PENG also shows good degradability. In addition, practical applications of the proposed PENG were demonstrated by converting biomechanical energy, such as walking, running, and jumping, into electricity.