Investigation of KAPTON–PDMS triboelectric nanogenerator considering the edge-effect capacitor

Harvesting the dissipated environmental mechanical energy to generate electrical energy is subject of the new research in the field of clean energy. In this paper, a triboelectric nanogenerator based on vertical two-electrode structure was fabricated using KAPTON and PDMS polymers. The nanogenerator outputs were measured and plotted by applying a mechanical vibration with the frequency of 8 Hz. The results indicated the ability of producing a voltage of 3.5 V and a current of 0.025 μA by this nanogenerator. To effectively simulate the performance of the device in different structural and environmental conditions, the ordinary capacitance model of the device was modified considering three effective capacitances. The simulation results showed a very good agreement between calculated and actual outputs when the edge effect capacitor was included in the ordinary model. Finally, based on the corrected model for the nanogenerator, the effect of the environmental conditions on the device output was studied. The innovative point of this text is the investigation of the effect of edge capacitors in the performance of triboelectric nanogenerators, and it has also been tried to collect a collection of studies that I have done in the field of triboelectric nanogenerators. © 2024 the author(s), published by De Gruyter.