Insight into Cigarette Wrapper and Electroactive Polymer Based Efficient TENG as Biomechanical Energy Harvester for Smart Electronic Applications

Here, we demonstrated an arc shaped flexible triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) that efficiently harvests asymmetrical mechanical energy for powering several portable electronic devices. Here the fabrication of TENG is based on the integration of a cigarette wrapper, spongelike poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) film, and conducting carbon tape. Here, the spongelike PVDF film was prepared through nonsolvent induced phase separation (NIPS) technique (by simply spraying PVDF solution on a water surface in a Petri dish). Owing to the low density of the PVDF sponge and the cigarette wrapper, the final device with a volume of 6.6 cm3 shows a total mass of 1.259 g. The fabricated TENG exhibits open circuit voltage of ∼342 V and short circuit current of ∼8.1 μA on frequencies of ∼3.4 Hz without electrospinning and poling treatment under finger tapping, which gives a maximum area power density of ∼0.37 mW/cm2 at a load resistance of 40 MΩ. The TENG shows excellent durability without any change in output performance successively for 7 days (193200 cycles). Also, this device directly lit up 136 commercial LEDs instantly without any rectification unit and sensed different types of mechanical forces. With easy fabrication and cost-effective technique, this work paves a new and smart way to fabricate high performance TENG for powering portable electronic appliances.