On the contact electrification mechanism in semiconductor-semiconductor case by vertical contact-separation triboelectric nanogenerator

Yue He; Jia Tian; Wenbo Peng; Danyang Huang; Fangpei Li; Yongning He

doi:10.1088/1361-6528/accde5

On the contact electrification mechanism in semiconductor-semiconductor case by vertical contact-separation triboelectric nanogenerator

Nanotechnology. 2023 May 2;34(29). doi: 10.1088/1361-6528/accde5.

Authors

Yue He^{1

2}, Jia Tian^{1

2}, Wenbo Peng^{1

2}, Danyang Huang^{1

2}, Fangpei Li³, Yongning He^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ School of Microelectronics, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710049, People's Republic of China.
² The Key Lab of Micro-Nano Electronics and System Integration of Xi'an City, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710049, People's Republic of China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing, Key Laboratory of Radiation Detection Materials and Devices, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710072, People's Republic of China.

PMID: 37071989
DOI: 10.1088/1361-6528/accde5

Abstract

With the speed of industrialization accelerating, the traditional energy is in the predicament of being exhausted. Humans urgently need a clean energy to maintain the peace and development. Triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is a tiny device that collects and converts the renewable energy, such as wind, vibration and tidal/blue energy, into electrical energy. As the most significant working principle of TENG, contact electrification (CE) has been broadly studied since it was documented thousands of years ago. A large number of related researches are reported. However, most of them are focused on the polymer materials, device structures and potential applications. There are few literatures about the mechanism of CE, especially in the semiconductor-semiconductor case. Semiconductor-semiconductor CE is a promising method to generate electricity, which has been used in many fields, such as the photodetector and displacement sensor. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a serious and detailed theory in order to deeply explain the underlying mechanisms of semiconductor-semiconductor CE. In this work, a novel Fermi level model based on energy band theory is proposed to illustrate the semiconductor-semiconductor CE mechanism. By assembling a ZnO/Si vertical contact-separation (CS) mode TENG, the charge transfer introduced by CE is systematically measured. According to the energy band theory and TENG governing equation, the experimental data is qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed. Moreover, the effects of different concentrations of growth solutions on the morphology of ZnO nanowires and the Fermi level difference between ZnO and Si are explored as well. Results show that it is the Fermi level difference that dominates the short circuit transfer charge amount and direction of semiconductor-semiconductor CE mechanism. Our work can be applied to understand the CE mechanism in semiconductor-semiconductor case and broaden the application prospects of semiconductor-based TENG.

Keywords: Fermi level difference; contact electrification; short circuit transfer charge; triboelectric nanogenerator; zinc oxide.