All-fiber transparent piezoelectric harvester with a cooperatively enhanced structure

• Published in: Nanotechnology Vol. 27; no. 43; p. 435403
• Main Authors: Fuh, Yiin-Kuen, Ho, Hsi-Chun, Wang, Bo-Sheng, Li, Shan-Chien
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England IOP Publishing 28.10.2016
• Subjects: all-fiber based transparent piezoelectric harvester (ATPH); direct-write; near-field electrospinning (NFES); polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF)
• ISSN: 0957-4484; 1361-6528
• DOI: 10.1088/0957-4484/27/43/435403

In this paper, we demonstrated a highly-flexible all-fiber based transparent piezoelectric harvester (ATPH) by using the direct-write, near-field electrospinning (NFES) technique and polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) micro/nano fibers (MNFs) as source materials. Here, we comprehensively show that transferred high performance transparent electrodes with Au-coated nanowire (NW) electrodes can be obtained using a facile and scalable combined fabrication route of both electrospinning and sputtering processes. Au-coated MNFs of a.c. 110 nm thick can significantly reduce junction resistance, which results in high transmittance (90%) at low sheet resistance (175 sq−1). The Au-coated MNFs electrodes also show great flexibility and stretchability, which easily surpass the brittleness of indium tin oxide (ITO) films. Further improvement in ATPH performance was realized by rolling the device into a cylindrical shape, resulting in an increase in power output due to the cooperatively enhanced effect. The rolled ATPH with 0.34 cm diameter produces a high output voltage of ∼4.1 V, current ∼295 nA at a strain of 0.5% and 5 hz. This can efficiently run commercially available electronic components in a self-powered mode without any external electrical supply.