IIT Guwahati develops triboelectrification for biomechanical energy harvesting device applications by breathing
India Today
Considering the abundant biomechanical energy in our daily life and its ubiquitous nature produced during human activities, the fabricated TENG device helps harvest the biomechanical energy to power up low-power electronics.
Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, and Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST), South Korea, have developed ferromagnetic nanocomposites to be utilised as a positive triboelectric layer in triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) suitable for energy harvesting device applications to harvest biomechanical energy from breathing (inhale and exhale) during standing, sitting, and bending positions.
Considering the abundant biomechanical energy in our daily life and its ubiquitous nature produced during human activities, the fabricated TENG device helps harvest the biomechanical energy to power up low-power electronics.
The results of such novel approach work have recently been published in Nano Energy (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2021.106662) and Materials Letters (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matlet.2021.131644), highly reputed journals in the area of materials science, and a few more exciting results are under communication.
With this connection, energy conversion devices like nanogenerators could effectively harness idle energy from wind, water waves, and biomechanical energy. The nanogenerators are generally categorised into electromagnetic, piezoelectric, pyroelectric, triboelectric, etc., depending on the energy conversion functionality and functionality with many applications like bio-robotics, defense, wearable electronics, micro-electro-mechanical systems, nano-electro-mechanical systems, etc.
Among these systems, the triboelectric nanogenerator has emerged as an eco-friendly energy harvester for self-powered applications, in which the triboelectrification is responsible for generating the surface charges when two surfaces exhibiting different work functions come in contact or friction with each other.
Typically, the materials generating surface charges are synthesised using a metal or polymer counterpart as the matrix component.
In this work, the researchers have developed ferromagnetic metal and metal-oxide nanocomposites using a cost-effective mechanochemical reduction process in a high- energy planetary ball mill technique, and the biomechanical energy harvesting demonstrated the nanocomposites as positive triboelectric layers to elucidate the usage of the fabricated TENG in real-time applications its application.
