DESIGNING WEAVING PATTERN AND ENGINEERING MULTILAYER STRUCTURE OF NYLON-ACRYLIC FABRIC UTILIZING IN TRIBOELECTRIC NANOGENERATOR

Abstract

In the contemporary era, the textile triboelectric nanogenerator (T-TENG) has sparked interest to be a powerful energy supply for small electronic devices and electronic component in next generation of electronic textiles. Most T-TENG is developed by adding other materials to fabric or cloths that probably limit the comfortable use. Fabrication of conformable fabrics with high triboelectric outputs remains challenging. This research is firmly focused on the development of fully-fabric T-TENG by employing woven nylon-acrylic fabrics as the main contact material and designing a weaving pattern together with engineering a multi-layered structure to amplify its electrical efficiency. Based on the experimental results, different weaving patterns provided different electrical output values owing to its different contact surface areas. The matt weave pattern can yield the best electrical output regarding the extreme deformations. A further significant enhancement in T-TENG’s performance is consistent with inserting polymer intermediate layer. Adding ball-fiber and kapok serves as a synergetic charge-trapping interlayer, rendering a high triboelectricity of both open circuit voltage (VOC) and short circuit current (ISC) for 3 to 8 times higher than that of nylon-acrylic single layer. Finally, the multilayer fabric T-TENG is integrated with the long-sleeved garments and provide output enough to fully-charge the 0.22 μF and 0.33 μF capacitors together with brightening 30 LEDs. Finally, this work demonstrates a potential way with simple procedures in achieving fully-fabric T-TENG for small-scale energy sources that can harvest biomechanical energy to power electronic component for approaching the real application in E-textile systems.