Ocean waves are one of the most abundant energy sources on earth, but harvesting such energy is rather challenging due to various limitations of current technologies. Recently, networks formed by triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) have been proposed as a promising technology for harvesting water wave energy. In this work, a basic unit for the TENG network was studied and optimized, which has a box structure composed of walls made of TENG composed of a wavy-structured Cu-Kapton-Cu film and two FEP thin films, with a metal ball enclosed inside. By combination of the theoretical calculations and experimental studies, the output performances of the TENG unit were investigated for various structural parameters, such as the size, mass, or number of the metal balls. From the viewpoint of theory, the output characteristics of TENG during its collision with the ball were numerically calculated by the finite element method and interpolation method, and there exists an optimum ball size or mass to reach maximized output power and electric energy. Moreover, the theoretical results were well verified by the experimental tests. The present work could provide guidance for structural optimization of wavy-structured TENGs for effectively harvesting water wave energy toward the dream of large-scale blue energy.
Keywords: blue energy; structural optimization; triboelectric nanogenerator; water wave energy.