Design and Optimization of a Spiral Electrode Triboelectric Nanogenerator Using Response Surface Methodology

Abstract

Triboelectric nanogenerator is a promising technology and emerging approach for harvesting en- vironmental mechanical energy. However, because of nature of the environmental mechanical motions, the amplitude and direction of the movements are unpre- dictable. In this paper, a triboelectric nanogenerator with a zero inductance spiral electrode is proposed to generate electricity from sliding motions, regardless of the motion direction. Various samples with different electrode size and number of spiral electrodes were fab- ricated and characterized. To obtain the optimum out- put power density, response surface methodology was employed. The experiments were designed based on the central composite design approach for different combi- nations of the electrode turn number and the electrode width and pitch. To show the validity and accuracy of the method, the predicted results were compared with additional experimental results which a good concor- dance between the results. Contours of output power density for different combinations of the design vari- ables were plotted. The latter helps designers to eas- ily find the optimal configuration to obtain the desired power output.