The coordination of displacement and conduction currents to boost the instantaneous power output of a water-tube triboelectric nanogenerator

Liquid-solid based triboelectric nanogenerator (L-S TENG) has aroused great attention in blue energy harvesting. Although these classical L-S TENG can achieve good performance by using the gradually changed displacement current, the further improvement of instantaneous power is limited. People can improve the output with external management circuits and transistor-like architecture, but the complex structure and fabrication process of devices make the practicality of TENG very difficult. Here, by developing the structure of charge collector needle to introduce conduction current into the traditional architecture of TENG, we designed a new water tube TENG (DcCc-TENG) with high instantaneous power. By establishing a detailed physical process model, we revealed that the physical nature of DcCc-TENG with high instantaneous power output is based on the synergistic enhancement mechanism of displacement and conduction currents. We also used the different device structures to further clarify the contribution of these two currents. Finally, a single device shows high instantaneous volumetric power density of 16.6 W/m³, which is capable to power more than 120 LEDs. A ship attitude sensor based on DcCc-TENG further proves its potential application in sensing.