UC Davis

Interest in the applications of Triboelectric Nanogenerators (TENGs) has grown in the past decade as a means of effective energy harvesting in addition to its applications in powering low powered electronics and sensors especially in the area of Internet of Things (IoT). Majority of the research into TENGs focuses on maximizing the power output through different material combinations, material doping, topography manipulation, and design construction. However, unlike most energy sources common today such as solar, wind, piezoelectric and pyroelectric, the methods of measuring TENG output have not been established or agreed upon in the scientific community. This makes determining how a TENG will perform in a given design space difficult as the amount of variables that can be adjusted are numerous. A systematic approach to understanding the behavior of a TENG is with Design of Experiments (DOE). DOE can provide insight into the behavior of the TENG by adjusting parameters to determine what influences the output the most. The most common parameters that are altered in a TENG outside of material science are contact area, contact force and displacement distance of the two triboelectric materials. The experimental results showed that the different parameters affected output depending on the stage of contact separation that was measured (coming into contact vs separating), and that separation distance had almost no effect on voltage output.