Publication

NMSL Lab

Publication

Aloe vera: A tropical desert plant to harness the mechanical energy by triboelectric and piezoelectric approaches
Author
Nagamalleswara Rao Alluri, Nirmal Prashanth Maria Joseph Raj, Gaurav Khandelwal, Venkateswaran Vivekananthan, Sang-Jae Kim
Journal
Nano Energy
Page
104767
Year
2020

Abstract

The tropical desert plant (aloe-vera, AV) derived natural bio-organic material used to convert the waste mechanical energy into electrical energy. The piezoelectric force microscopy measurement of AV film shows the amplitude resembles the butterfly-like shaped, and the phase loop depicts the 180° switching of domains confirming the ferroelectricity of AV. The obtained converse piezoelectric coefficient (d33) is 6.5 pm V−1, and remnant polarization is 1.02 μC/cm2 for poled AV film due to the development of long-range order of acemannan (A) chains and their interaction between them A-A or A-uronic acids through the newly formed hydrogen bonds. The piezoelectric AV film-energy harvester (AV film-EH) generates a peak-to-peak output response of (1.2 V, 200 nA), and the instantaneous peak power is ≈ 0.42 μW at 10 MΩ upon 4 N force. The non-contact surface potential measurement and KPFM results confirm the AV is a moderate positive triboelectric material having a surface potential of +1.14 V, respectively. The triboelectricity of AV explored in two approaches, such as dry film (F) and gel (G) type interacting with the different materials. The AV film-PDMS, AV gel-PDMS TENG, delivers an instantaneous power density of 0.19 μW/cm2 upon 2 m/s2 acceleration of shaft load and 0.22 μW/cm2 upon biomechanical hand force. Next, successfully demonstrated the AV film-EH could work as a self-powered finger monitoring sensor to monitor human finger bending angles. It also explored that the electrical output of AV film-PDMS TENG is used to power the smartwatch successfully. Here, the generated electric energy from the desert plant is clean, cost-effective, and plentiful to develop the self-powered biosensor/implantable devices.