Silicon-based hybrid cell for harvesting solar energy and raindrop electrostatic energy
Journal
NANO ENERGY
Journal Volume
9
Pages
291
Date Issued
2014
Author(s)
Abstract
Silicon-based solar cell is by far the most established solar cell technology. The surface of a Si solar cell is usually covered by a layer of transparent material to protect the device from environmental damages/corrosions. Here, we replaced this protection layer by a transparent triboelectric nanogeneartor (TENG), for simultaneously or individually harvesting solar and raindrop energy when either or both of them are available in our living environment. The TENG is made of a specially processed polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) film, an indium tin oxide (ITO) and a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) layer. Under solar light irradiation (12W/m2) in a rainy day, the fabricated high-efficiency solar cell provides an open-circuit (Voc) of 0.43V and short-circuit current density (Jsc) of 4.2A/m2. And the TENG designed for collection of raindrop energy gives an AC Voc of 30V and Jsc of 4.2mA/m2 when impacted by water drops at a dripping rate of 0.116ml/s. In rainy days, the performance of solar cell decreased greatly, while TENG can be a good compensation as for green energy harvesting. From these results, we can see that the hybrid cell formed by a solar cell and a water-drop TENG have great potential for simultaneously/individually harvesting both solar energy and raindrop electrostatic energy under different weather conditions, especially in raining season.
Subjects
Hybrid cell; Triboelectric nanogenerator; Solar energy; Raindrop electrostatic energy; Energy harvesting; TRIBOELECTRIC NANOGENERATOR; CONTACT-ELECTRIFICATION; WATER; OPTIMIZATION; ANGLE
Publisher
ELSEVIER
Type
journal article