Triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) energy harvester using polypropylene-based recycled food packaging materials

Triboelectric nanogenerators, or TENGs, harvest ambient mechanical energies and convert them to electricity by coupling triboelectrification and field induction. The apparatus comprises a dielectric as an electron acceptor and a metal layer as an electron donor. These devices are low-cost, simple, and can use waste plastic materials, like snack chip food packaging, as the dielectric layer. Snack chip packaging uses a multilayer of metalized Biaxially Oriented Polypropylene (BOPP) to preserve the food quality. This study fabricated two vertical contact-separation (VCS) modes, TENGs-cl and rf, using waste materials as an upper layer, while the opposite layer is made from aluminum foil. TENG-cl and TENG-rf could generate an output voltage of 699 Vpp and 1045Vpp, respectively. TENG-cl and rf generated a power density of 4.0mW/m2 and 9.0mW/m2 from the rms voltage across the 60MΩ load resistor. The output was significantly higher than previously reported devices using similar materials.