MSE PhD Proposal – Simiao Niu
Sept. 16th, Tuesday, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
Room 114, IPST building
Committee members:
Dr. Zhong Lin Wang (MSE, advisor)
Dr. Meilin Liu (MSE)
Dr. Russell D. Dupuis (ECE/MSE)
Dr. John D. Cressler (ECE)
Dr. Farrokh Ayazi (ECE)

Title: Theory of triboelectric nanogenerators

Abstract:
Energy harvesting from natural environment has long been considered as a promising supplement to the traditional fuel sources. On the large scale, people have involved large amount of resources in finding alternative energy sources for tradition fuel sources. Besides, these energy harvesting techniques can also solve the energy source problem for mobile electronics when the traditional energy source is unreachable. Traditional mechanical energy harvesting mainly harnesses electromagnetic, electrostatic, and piezoelectric effect, but each of them has their own limitations. In 2012, a newly invented technology, called triboelectric nanogenerator, overcomes the above drawbacks and exhibits unique figure of merits, including large output power, high efficiency, low weight and cost effective materials, simple fabrication, and high adaptability to different applications. The main working principle of triboelectric generators is a conjugation between the contact electrification and electrostatic induction. Although several experiments have already been demonstrated for triboelectric nanogenerators, there are still many mysteries of fundamental understanding of triboelectric nanogenerators. To unveil these mysteries, a thorough theoretical study of the fundamental physics and output characteristics of TENGs is completely necessary.