(The) mechanochemical process triggers triboelectrification in PTFE

Abstract

We studied about relationship between the triboelectrification and the mechanochemical process – which is the chemical reaction between the cleaved covalent bonds on the surface and the gaseous species from ambient. Gamma irradiation was used to introduce high concentration of mechanochemical products. As a result of gamma ray irradiation on various polymer samples, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), which is the most commonly used tribo-negative material, showed the greatest enhancement in triboelectric charge. Various material analysis tools such as AFM, XRD, DSC, XPS, EPR, and ATR FT-IR were used to monitor chemical, structural, and morphological change at irradiated PTFE. We performed control experiments and molecular simulations to explain the mechanism of enhanced triboelectricity. On the other hand, using the inherent transmissive nature of gamma-ray, we experimentally demonstrated that gamma-irradiation can be used to enhance output of almost all kind of triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs). We look forward that this work will shed light to unknown mechanism of triboelectricity and power enhancement study of TENGs.