Executive Summary : | A sustainable solid-waste management is the need of the hour as the plastic and food wastes are polluting our land, water and air at an alarming level. The pandemic, Covid-19 has accelerated the use of single use plastic materials at its ever-high rates. Reduce, reuse and recycle are the sustainable way out for this burning issue. A few attempts have been reported to derive energy generators and self-powered sensors from these solid wastes, mainly mechanical energy harvesters and sensors based on triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG) and piezoelectric nanogenerators (PENG). Among the mechanical energy harvesters TENG are self-sufficient power sources which effectively convert mechanical energy into electricity based on the coupling between triboelectric effect and electrostatic induction. This clean, portable mechanical energy harvester has many advantages such as large output power, low cost, simple production and high conversion efficiency. TENG can cater the power demands of fast-growing flexible electronics industry including wearable electronics, bendable displays and electronic skin applications. On the other hand, PENG work on the principle of electricity generation when subjected to mechanical stress or vibration. In a typical PENG, two electrodes with balanced Fermi levels on a piezoelectric material are subjected to an external strain, which creates a piezo potential difference between the internal and external Fermi levels. PENGs have shown high efficiency at low frequencies, enable wide choice of materials and are light weight in comparison to electromagnetic generators (EMGs). However, there are several burning issues to overcome for practical exploration of PENG in the self-powered electronics. These handicaps include low power output, poor mechanical durability and lastly, high cost of production from a mass production perspective. Interestingly, some of these issues, especially the low power output of PENGs, can be complemented by TENGs. Amalgamating the advantages of both TENG and PENG, here we propose a Piezo-Tribo Hybrid Nanogenerator (PTHNG) derived from solid-waste materials, mainly plastic (PET, mylar, polypropylene etc.) and bio-wastes (Egg shell membrane, onion peels, cellulose from plant waste, shells from sea food etc.) aiding circular economy concept. The PTHNG device will be demonstrated for powering electronic gadgets and sensors. Further, self-powered tactile sensor will be developed using PTHNG device by fine-tuning the device structure for static and dynamic touch sensing application. In addition, an energy autonomous waste material derived-PTHNG vibrational sensor with enhanced sensitivity to ambient vibrations will be developed for the real-time fault detection of machineries and structures. |