Surface potential tailoring of electrospun polymer fibers for enhanced triboelectric performance

Triboelectric generators rely on contact-generated surface charge transfer between materials with different electron affinities to convert mechanical energy into useful electricity. The ability to modify the surface chemistry of polymeric materials can therefore lead to significant enhancement of the triboelectric performance. Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) is a biocompatible polymer commonly used in medical applications, but its central position on the triboelectric series, which empirically ranks materials according to their electron-donating or electron accepting tendencies, renders it unsuitable for application in triboelectric generators. In this work, we show that the surface potential of PMMA fibers produced by electrospinning can be tailored during the fabrication process, thereby improving its triboelectric performance, as compared to typically spin-coated PMMA films. We demonstrate the enhancement of triboelectric energy harvesting capability of the electrospun PMMA fibers, suggesting that this surface potential modification approach can be more widely applied to other materials as well, for improved triboelectric performance.

Figure: Surface chemistry of electrospun poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) fibers can be tailored via the polarity of the applied voltage, resulting in enhanced triboelectric performance