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Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have emerged as promising energy harvesting devices due to their low cost, flexible design, and ability to convert low-frequency mechanical energy into electricity. However, their practical application remains limited by low surface charge density and poor long-term stability. To address the former, corona discharge treatment has been widely employed to inject high-energy negative charges into polymer surfaces, significantly enhancing initial output voltage. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of corona discharge is short-lived, as the injected charges dissipate rapidly due to recombination with atmospheric positive ions and chemical degradation induced by oxygen and moisture. This temporal degradation directly causes a decline in output voltage over time, severely limiting long-term viability of TENG. To address the issue of dissipation of corona-injected charges, which leads to a gradual decline in output performance, we introduce a surface encapsulation strategy. In this approach, a thin polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) overlayer is applied to the corona-treated films to suppress charge recombination and surface degradation. This overlayer functions as a physical barrier, effectively suppressing both electrostatic recombination and chemical decay. Experimental results confirm that this approach greatly improves charge retention in both pure PDMS and TiO 2 /PDMS composite films. Specifically, voltage retention increased from around 25 to 85% in coated pure PDMS films after 60 days. In TiO 2 composites with inherently higher charge densities, retention remained as high as 72.6%. This study demonstrates that the synergistic combination of corona discharge and PDMS coating offers a robust strategy to achieve both high initial performance and long-term operational stability, paving the way for durable and efficient TENG devices in real-world energy harvesting applications.
Zhou et al. (Tue,) studied this question.