Natural seagrass tribopositive material based spray coatable triboelectric nanogenerator

Abstract For the first time, this paper proposes natural seagrass based prominent ocean flowering and bio-friendly material for triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) through a simple spray coating technique. Herein, two different seagrass species (Zostera marina and Phyllospadix japonicus) are effectively applied as a tribopositive material. Furthermore, spray coatable Phyllospadix japonicus seagrass film/PET TENG yields a higher power density of 70.42 μW/cm2 compared to Zostera marina seagrass film/PET TENG of 50.42 μW/cm2 because of the higher oxygen functional groups, which enables the device to offer increased electron-donating capability. Moreover, the output performance of the proposed spray coatable TENG device improved by about 31% compared to powder-based seagrass film. Furthermore, the Phyllospadix japonicus based TENG presents the extraordinary working stability up to 72,000 cycles (2 h), which confirms the excellent robustness of the fabricated device. It is further demonstrated that the proposed Phyllospadix japonicus based TENG can easily charge various commercial capacitors and capable of driving about 150 light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and other microelectronic devices. We anticipate that by applying seagrass as a tribopositive layer, the proposed spray coatable TENG device will serve its promising role for energy generation with extremely low fabrication cost. Furthermore, in addition to the economic use of seagrass as a TENG, this work can favorably contribute to sustainable seagrass management.