Output performance enhanced triboelectric nanogenerator with gear train support

Triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is one of ways to convert mechanical energy sound, waves, wind, vibrations, and human motions to available electrical energy. The principal mechanism to generate electrical energy is based on contact electrification on material surface and electrostatic induction between electrodes. The performance of TENG are dependent on amount of the input mechanical energy and characteristics of triboelectric materials. Furthermore, the whole TENG system including mechanical structure and electrical system can effect on output performance of TENG. In this work, we investigated the effect of gear train on output performance and power conversion efficiency (PCE) of TENG under a given input energy. We applied the gear train on mechanical structure to improve the contact rate. We measured the output energy under a constant input energy by controlling the size of the working gear. We prepared gears with gear ratios (rin/rw) of 1, 1.7, and 5. Under the constant input energy, the voltage and current from our gear-based TENG system were enhanced up to the maximum of 3.6 times and 4.4 times, respectively. Also, the PCE was increased up to 7 times at input frequency of 1.5 Hz. In order to understand the effect of kinematic design on TENG system, we performed a capacitor experiment with rectification circuit that provide DC voltage and current. Under the input frequency of 4.5 Hz, we obtained a 3 times enhanced rectifying voltage at a gear ratio of 5. The measured capacitor voltage was enhanced up to about 8 fold in using our TENG system. It is attributed that our gear-based TENG system could improve simultaneously the magnitude as well as the generation time of output power, finally enhancing output energy. Therefore, our gear-based TENG system provided an effective way to enhance the PCE of TENGs operating at a given input energy.