Effects of particle size of dielectric fillers on the output performance of piezoelectric and triboelectric nanogenerators

Recently, piezoelectric/triboelectric nanogenerators based on piezoelectric composite materials have been intensively studied to achieve high electrical output performance. In this work, flexible BaTiO3 (BT)/PDMS nanocomposite films with various sizes and concentrations were fabricated and used as the nanogenerators. The influence of dielectric properties on the electrical output of nanogenerators was studied as well as the structure of the composites. The dielectric constant increased from 6.5 to 8 with the concentration of BT nanoparticles and decreased with the frequency from 102 to 106 Hz. Furthermore, the dielectric constant showed 11% decrease with the temperature range from 30 to 180 °C. It was found that the concentration of BT nanoparticles has promoted the electrical output of nanogenerators. The output voltage and current are all enhanced with the BT nanoparticles, which reached 200 V and 0.24 °A in TENG with 40 wt% BT nanoparticles, respectively. The selected device exhibited the power of 0.16 mW and employed to demonstrate its ability to power wearable/portable electronics by lighting the LEDs.