An all-fibrous triboelectric nanogenerator with enhanced outputs depended on the polystyrene charge storage layer

Electrospun fibers based-triboelectric nanogenerators (EF-TENGs) are considered to have a positive application prospect on wearable energy harvesters. However，the poor comfortable breathability and low output performance under weak force as the common problems which are associated with the EF-TENGs are the principal issue that impede the practical applications. Here, an improved EF-TENG with breathable-antibacterial electrode and electrostatic induction enhancement layer is proposed by introducing silver nanowires (AgNWs) as electrodes and electrospun polystyrene (PS) nanofibers as charge storage layer, respectively. Based on this, a high-performance all-fibrous materials-based triboelectric nanogenerator (AF-TENG) is successfully fabricated and investigated. A high output voltage 200 V and current density 70 mA/m 2 was achieved with the work area of 90 mm 2 and AF-TENG was demonstrated could charge the economical capacitor with 1 μF to 2 V at a short time of 40 s under a continuous driven force and frequency at 1 Hz. Simultaneously, AF-TENG acts as a real-time force detective sensor integrated with normal fabrics also show excellent performance with a high signal-to-noise ratio. Based on these characteristics of AF-TENG verified above, this work is thought to inspire an effective ponder to the evolution of wearable energy harvester. Starting from the original idea of all-fibrous triboelectric nanogenerator (AF-TENG) with PS intermediate fibers layer to enhance output and AgNWs as the electrodes, we successfully fabricated all the fibrous parts and demonstrated the excellent property as an energy harvester even under weak force. And we propose AF-TENG will be developed to meet the requirement of wearability as the smart textiles. • An all-fibrous materials-based TENG (AF-TENG) is proposed and successfully fabricated. • High performances of the AF-TENG enhanced by the intermediate PS layer acts as charge trapping and storage layer. • AF-TENG serves as an efficient energy harvester and high signal-to-noise force detector is verified in practice.