Effect of commercial P25 TiO₂ doping in polydimethylsiloxane tribo-film on the output performance of triboelectric nanogenerator and its application

Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is a popular tribo-layer film for triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) often used for mechanical energy harvesting to collect sustainable energy. Material doping in PDMS is a feasible method for performance enhancement of TENG. Different dielectric materials in TENG involved in time-consuming and complex chemical process. Here, we propose a PDMS-TENG doped with a commercially available and non-toxic dielectric material P25 TiO₂ with fast process. The dielectric triboelectric layer is casted by PDMS with doped TiO₂ (TiO₂@PDMS) at a precisely controlled concentration and combined into TENG with aluminium sheet (TiO₂@PDMS-Al-TENG). The optimal TiO2@PDMS-Al-TENG occurred at 0.45 wt% of P25 TiO₂. In comparison to the non-doped PDMS-Al-TENG, the open-circuit voltage increased by 223 %, the short-circuit current increased by 263 %, and the output power increased by 692 %. TiO₂@PDMS-Al-TENG can be applied to drive electrical appliances. This demonstrates that using commercially available low-cost TiO₂ can enhance power generation performance enough for PDMS-Al-TENG at a fast process and be widely used in the power generation thin films.