A high-efficiency transparent electrification-based generator for harvesting droplet energy

This paper reports a transparent flexible triboelectric generator for harvesting the energy from droplet effectively. An interdigital-shaped electrode was fabricated on ITO-coated PET film, which made the generator transparent, flexible with hydrophobic surface. Employed the simple structure and method, high output performance was achieved. With a 30 μL water drop flowing on the device, 22 V effective voltage and 2.67 μJ maximum output energy were obtained, while a maximum energy conversion efficiency of about 8.7% was observed. Thanks to its highly transparency, simple manufacturing process, and high output performance, the generator has much potential to harvest the energy from rain drop or liquid flow in microfluidics.