Electric impulse spring-assisted contact separation mode triboelectric nanogenerator fabricated from polyaniline emeraldine salt and woven carbon fibers

In this article, we used modified woven carbon fiber mat (wCF-COOH), as one of the contact-electrification Triboelectric Nanogenerator (TENG) friction layer to generate high open circuit voltage (Voc) and short circuit current (Isc). We designed the contact-separation mode TENG which is functional using spring structure. The oxidation of wCF into wCF-COOH by Piranha solution followed by coupling of aniline through electrostatic interactions and in-situ oxidative polymerization to get woven carbon fiber-polyaniline emeraldine salt (wCF.PANI.ES) composite is a novel approach. The wCF-PANI.ES composite displays the surface resistivity of 0.324 Ω m and serves as a friction layer to generate charges by harvesting energy through vertical contact-separation mode TENG against PVDF membrane. The dynamic interactions of novel wCF-PANI.ES and PVDF membrane produced high Voc of 95 V, and Isc of 180 μA, respectively. In particular, wCF-PANI.ES-TENG has shown an enhancement of 498% of Voc with respect to wCF-COOH-TENG due to availability of PANI layer. In addition, it was observed that the proposed wCF-PANI.ES-TENG has shown the output power of 12.4 mW at 5 Hz, and the rectified current upto 180 μA. The novel wCF-PANI.ES is the potential candidate for fulfilling the need of optimized energy harvesting device as an alternate material option for contact-separation mode TENGs.