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Cite this: Energy Environ. Sci., 2013, 6, 3235 Received 10th July 2013 Accepted 14th August 2013 DOI: 10.1039/c3ee42311e www.rsc.org/ees

A transparent single-friction-surface triboelectric generator and self-powered touch sensor

Bo Meng, Wei Tang, Zhi-han Too, Xiaosheng Zhang, Mengdi Han, Wen Liu and Haixia Zhang*

We present a single-friction-surface triboelectric generator (STEG). The STEG is transparent and exible, making possible the use of triboelectric generators in an extended range of applications. This device is fabricated in a simple and very low-cost way. When tapped with a nger, the STEG with micro-patterned PDMS surface achieved an open-circuit voltage over 130 V with a short-circuit current density of about 1 mA cm2. A STEG with a at PET surface is employed as a transparent cover on the screen of a smartphone to generate electric energy from the control motion of the users. The STEG can directly power 3 LEDs when the phone screen is tapped during normal use. In addition, based on the STEG, we have developed a self-powered visualized touch sensor with 4 STEGs serving as the touch pads. The STEG shows promise for applications in systems such as self-powered touch panels and articial skins.

Broader context
Harvesting mechanical energy from the environment is widely considered an attractive approach to provide a green energy source for self-powered systems. Novel energy harvesting devices based on contact electrication and electrostatic induction have been developed and shown to achieve high output power. In this work, a single-friction-surface triboelectric generator (STEG) has been developed and characterized. The STEG can be produced using a very simple fabrication process and makes possible the use of TENGs in an extended range of applications. As the STEG device is transparent and exible, they may prove an attractive power source for exible electronics and portable devices. As a demonstration, a STEG was applied as a transparent cover on the screen of a smartphone to generate electrical energy during normal use of the smartphone touchscreen. A selfpowered touch sensor was developed using 4 STEGs as touch pads. This self-powered device indicates which pad was touched on an LCD screen, demonstrating the possibility that an array of STEG devices could potentially be used to develop self-powered supersensitive touch panels and articial skins.

Introduction
Harvesting mechanical energy from the environment is widely considered an attractive approach to provide a green energy source for self-powered systems,1,2 such as wireless sensor networks, implanted medical devices, and other electronics. Energy harvesters which convert mechanical energy into electrical energy based on piezoelectric,36 electromagnetic7,8 and electrostatic9,10 operating principles have been developed. Contact electrication is a well-known phenomenon that occurs all around us in daily life. It has been studied for centuries and applied in various ways.1114 In recent research, novel energy harvesting devices termed triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have been developed.1528 These devices operate based on contact electrication and electrostatic induction. TENGs can achieve high output power density, which has made possible
National Key Lab of Nano/Micro Fabrication Technology, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China. E-mail: zhang-alice@pku.edu.cn Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available: The ESI contains 4 additional videos showing the applications of the STEG and the self-powered touch sensor based on the STEG. See DOI: 10.1039/c3ee42311e

applications in wireless systems,18,19 portable electronics,18 biomedical microsystems20 and self-powered nanosensors.27 Previously reported TENGs employed a typical structure consisting of a pair of friction surfaces and two induction electrodes, one for each friction surface. For this design, the most eective way to improve the output power is to signicantly separate the two friction surfaces either vertically or laterally aer they are charged by contact electrication. Output voltages of over 1000 V were reported in the recent research by Wang's group,21,24 a signicant increase in comparison to the open-circuit voltage of only 18 V achieved in TENGs using an inseparable structure.16 However, implementing a large vertical or lateral separation requires additional space, which will limit the applications of separating structure TENGs. In this work, we present a single-friction-surface triboelectric generator (STEG). This device incorporates only one single micro-structured PDMS or at PET friction surface. When an active object such as nger, glove, pen, clothes, or similar contacts the xed friction surface, the surface of the contacting

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Energy & Environmental Science object serves as the second friction surface in the friction pair. The motion of the contacting object will thus stimulate the STEG. This STEG can be fabricated on transparent and exible materials using a very simple process and is low cost. The single-friction-surface device achieves a signicantly higher output power density than a previously reported inseparablestructure transparent TENG.16 Since this TENG is exible and totally transparent, it could be a promising power source for exible electronic devices and portable electronic products with displays such as smartphones and tablets.

Communication friction surface and compose a friction pair with the xed friction surface. The eective friction area of the STEG is about 1.5 cm 2.5 cm, which is similar in size to the contact area of a human nger. Fig. 1b shows the SEM image of the micro-patterned PDMS lm. The side length of the micro-pyramids is 10 mm, and the period is 20 mm. The photographs of the fabricated STEG in Fig. 1c illustrate the exibility and transparency of the device. Preparing of the micro-structured PDMS lm A 4 inch (100) silicon wafer with an LPCVD SiO2 lm on top was patterned with an array of square windows by photolithography and BHF etching. The wafer was then etched in 30% KOH solution at 80  C to fabricate the inverted-pyramids array. A thin layer of chromium was deposited on the Si mold to facilitate peeling o of the PDMS lm. Mixed PDMS elastomer and cross linking agent (in the ratio of 10 : 1) was coated on the Si mold. Aer a thermal curing process at 90  C for 30 minutes the solidied PDMS lm was bonded to the PETITO substrate and then peeled o from the Si mold.

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Experimental
Fig. 1a shows a schematic diagram of the STEG. The device is fabricated on a 125 mm thick PET substrate. A PDMS lm patterned with an array of micro-pyramids serves as the friction surface. A transparent ITO induction electrode is coated on the back side of the PET substrate. A 100 mm thick copper foil was employed as the reference electrode, and was grounded (as an alternative, a large-size reference electrode could be used as the equivalent ground). Thus, the location of reference electrode is irrelevant to the operation of the device. As required for dierent applications, the reference electrode can be placed beside (Fig. 1ai) or beneath (Fig. 1aii) the induction electrode. For comparison, we also developed a simplied STEG that employs a at PET substrate as the single friction surface. When a nger or other object is brought into contact with the PDMS or PET surface of the STEG, the surface of this object will serve as an active

Results and discussion

The energy harvesting mechanism of the STEG is described in Fig. 2. This device works based on the eects of contact electrication and electrostatic induction. When an active object (such as a nger, glove or pen) contacts the friction surface (PDMS or PET) by touching, tapping or sliding, the surface of the active object and the xed friction surface compose a

Fig. 1 (a) Schematic of the STEG using a micro-structured PDMS friction surface with the grounded reference electrode placed (i) beside or (ii) beneath the induction electrode. (b) SEM image of the micro-patterned PDMS lm. (c) Photographs of the STEGs with a PDMS surface and PET surface showing their high transparency and exibility.

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Fig. 2 Energy harvesting mechanism of the STEG (a) when the friction surface shows a tendency to attract electrons in contact electrication. (b) The schematic and equivalent circuit of the device when the friction surface is stimulated by a human nger.

friction pair. Owing to the dierence in electron-attracting abilities between the two surfaces, electrons will be transferred from the surface that attracts electrons less to the surface that attracts electrons more, thus making the friction pair electrostatically charged. When the charged active object separates from the friction surface, a potential dierence forms between the induction electrode and the grounded reference electrode. Charge will transfer via the external load from one electrode to the other in order to reach an electrostatic equilibrium state. When the active object contacts the friction surface again, an inverse charge transfer occurs. Fig. 2a shows the condition when the friction surface shows a tendency to attract electrons in contact electrication. Electrons transfer from the reference electrode to the induction electrode during contact and move back to the reference electrode during separation. Specially, when the friction surface is touched by a human nger, the fact that the human body is a conductor should be considered. Here, we employ the simplest human body model (HBM)29 which adopts a series RC circuit (Fig. 2bi). In which, RB represents the body resistance and CB is the body capacitance. Since the lateral dimension of the friction surface is much larger than the thickness, within a small range of the gap

between nger and the friction surface, the two contacted surfaces and the induction electrode can be assumed to be innitely large planes. Thus, the device is simplied into the equivalent circuit described in Fig. 2bii, in which CG(t) corresponds to the capacitance between nger surface and the friction surface, C1 is the corresponding capacitance between the friction surface and the induction electrode, and RL is the load resistance. According to Kirchho's law, the equivalent transient equation of the circuit is dened by: Q Qi t Qi t Qi t d Q i t R B R L C G t CB C1 dt (1)

in which, Q is the charge on the friction surface, Qi(t) is the charge on the induction electrode. Taking the leak of charge from the human body into consideration, the transient equation is modied into: Q Qi t Qi t DQ Qi t dQi t R B R L C G t CB C1 dt (2)

in which DQ is the charge that is leaked. The corresponding steady-state equation is given by:

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Fig. 3 Characterization of the STEG. The open-circuit voltage, short-circuit current and charge transferred in a half cycle of the STEG with the micro-patterned PDMS surface (a) when tapped with a bare nger and (b) when tapped with a nger covered in a PE glove and the same measurements for the STEG with the at PET surface (c) when tapped with a bare nger and (d) when tapped with a nger covered in a PE glove.

Q Qi Qi DQ Qi CB CG C1

(3)

Qi

QCB C1 DQC1 CG CB C1 C1 CG CB CG

(4)

Based on the steady-state equation, we can easily gure out how Qi varies with the gap between the two contacted surfaces:

and the charge that is transferred via the load in a half cycle is:

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Energy & Environmental Science in a half cycle was measured by charging a 200 nF capacitor through a full wave rectier bridge. In each measurement, the reference electrode was grounded by the probe. Fig. 3 shows the open-circuit voltage, short-circuit current and the amount of charge transferred in a half cycle of the STEG with the micro-patterned PDMS surface when tapped with a bare nger (Fig. 3a) and tapped with a nger covered in a PE glove (Fig. 3b) and the same measurements for the STEG with the at PET surface when tapped with a bare nger (Fig. 3c) and tapped with a nger covered in a PE glove (Fig. 3d). It is clear that considerable contact electrication occurred under all 4 conditions tested. The PDMS surface shows a tendency to attract electrons, while the PET surface shows a tendency to donate electrons. With transferred charge of about 4 nC to 5 nC in a half cycle, the STEG with the micro-patterned PDMS surface shows similar performance in charging regardless of whether it is tapped by a bare nger or by the PE glove. Though PDMS and PE exhibit similar abilities in attracting electrons,18 the microstructure on the PDMS surface signicantly enhances the contact electrication. When tapped with a bare nger, the STEG with the micro-patterned PDMS surface achieved an opencircuit voltage of over 130 V with a short-circuit current density of about 1 mA cm2. Owing to the big dierence between PET and PE in their ability to attract electrons and the rough surface of the PE glove, the STEG with the at PET surface can achieve a higher output than the STEG with a micro-structured PDMS surface with an increase of about 40% in the amount of transferred charge when tapped with PE glove. In comparison, when tapped by a bare nger, the open-circuit output voltage of the STEG with the at PET surface was less than 100 V, and the charge transferred was less than 36% of that transferred in the case of the STEG using micro-patterned PDMS. Since the STEG is totally transparent, we employed a STEG using a at PET friction surface as a transparent cover on the screen of a smartphone. The reference electrode with a size of about 10 cm 5 cm was placed on the back of the smartphone. The STEG can generate electric energy from the control motion of the users while not disturbing the normal operation of the phone touchscreen. As shown in Fig. 4a, the STEG was sized to t the screen of the phone, with approximate dimension 7 cm 4 cm. When a user operates the smartphone touchscreen in the normal way (by tapping, sliding, etc.), the STEG can power a monochrome LCD display (Fig. 4b and Video S1 in ESI) and illuminate 3 LEDs connected in series (Fig. 4c and Video S2 in ESI) via a full wave rectier bridge. In another demonstration, when the screen was tapped with 3 ngers, 50 LEDs connected in series could be simultaneously illuminated (Video S3 in ESI). Based on the STEG device, we demonstrated a visualized touch sensor with a self-powered display. In this device, 4 STEGs serve as touch pads. These 4 STEGs used at PET for the friction surface. Fig. 5 shows the logic circuit diagram (Fig. 5a) and a photograph (Fig. 5b) of this self-powered touch sensor. Several ordinary diodes (IN4007) were used to create a logic circuit to control the LCD. These components were integrated on a exible printed circuit board. When the STEG touch pad was tapped with a nger, the LCD displays which touch pad was
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Fig. 4 A STEG applied as a transparent cover on the screen of a smartphone (a) Photograph of the STEG sized to t the screen of the phone. (b) A monochrome LCD was powered and (c) 3 LEDs connected in series were illuminated by the STEG when the smartphone touchscreen was operated in the normal way.

Fig. 5 Self-powered visualized touch sensor based on the STEG. (a) The logic circuit diagram and (b) photograph of the self-powered touch sensor. (c) The LCD displays which touch pad was touched when a STEG touch pad is tapped with a nger.

QT Qi max Qi min Q

DQC1 C1 CB

(5)

As a conclusion of the above discussion, with the nger motion of repeated contacting and separating, charge moves forward and back between the induction electrode and the grounded reference electrode via the external load. Therefore, the applied mechanical energy is transformed into electric energy. The leak of charge from the human body would partly weaken the performance of the device. The performance of this STEG was characterized by tapping a bare nger and a nger covered in a PE glove on the friction surface. The open-circuit voltage was measured by a commercial RIGOL oscilloscope (RIGOL DS1102E) with an input impedance of 100 MU. To measure the short-circuit current, a 10 KU sampling resistor was employed. The charge transferred
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Energy & Environmental Science touched (Fig. 5c and Video S4 in ESI). As contact electrication occurs for a large range of contacting materials, the STEG device is a promising technology to develop self-powered supersensitive touch panels and articial skins for consumer electronics and robotic applications.

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Conclusions
In summary, a novel design of triboelectric generator has been developed and characterized. This STEG incorporates only one friction surface and can be produced using a simpler fabrication process than that used for traditional TENG designs. The STEG makes possible the use of TENGs in an extended range of applications. Under excitation by nger tapping, a STEG using a micro-patterned PDMS surface achieved an output voltage of over 130 V with a short-circuit current density of about 1 mA cm2. As the STEG devices are transparent and exible, they may prove an attractive power source for exible electronics and portable devices. As a demonstration, a STEG with a at PET surface was applied as a transparent cover on the screen of a smartphone to generate electrical energy during normal use of the smartphone touchscreen. A self-powered touch sensor was also developed using 4 STEGs as touch pads. This self-powered device indicates which pad was touched on an LCD screen, demonstrating the possibility that an array of STEG devices presented here could potentially be used to develop self-powered supersensitive touch panels and articial skins.

Acknowledgements
This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grand no. 91023045 and no. 61176103), 863 project (no. 2013AA041102) and Doctoral Program Fund (no. 20110001110103).

Notes and references

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