Circuit representation, experiment and analysis of parallel-cell triboelectric nanogenerator

Typical simulation using finite element for designing triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) needs high computational resources. Equivalent circuit modeling as a less computationally intensive method has great potential for TENG simulation but it is only used for simple structures in the literature. In this work, taking parallel-cell triboelectric nanogenerator (PC-TENG) as an example, we establish an equivalent circuit representation for TENG with complex structures. The boundary effect and the parasitic capacitance, which are normally ignored in the existing simple circuit models in the literature, are considered in the equivalent circuit modeling by comparison with finite element simulation and experiment. With the validated equivalent circuit model of the PC-TENG, a parametric study demonstrates the influence of various critical parameters (separation angle α from 0° to 90°, excitation frequency from 1 Hz to 10 Hz, and excitation amplitude truncation percentage from 0 % to 100 %) on the electrical outputs of the PC-TENG, showing that PC-TENG can obtain the optimal outputs at α > 15°, 10 Hz and a truncation percentage of 50 %. The methodology based on the proposed circuit representation paves the way for holistic modeling, evaluation and optimization for complex TENG design.