Executive Summary : | The project aims to develop polymer-based flexible and sustainable sensing and energy harvesting devices. Flexible devices require a polymeric protective layer to ensure their flexibility and safety. Mostly all polymers are triboelectric in nature which could produce collective response for a polymer coated piezoelectric device. However, triboelectricity is highly moisture/humidity sensitive, leading to irreproducibility in device response. This irreproducibility restricts the application of both the piezoelectric nanogenerator (PNG) and triboelectric nanogenerator (TNG) for their forward engineering and various advanced applications. As per the triboelectric series, most of the flexible polymers (having of electron withdrawing functionalities) are tribo-negative (e.g., fluorinated polymers); some polymers (mostly biopolymers, e.g., hair, fur, feather, skin, etc.) (because of having electron donating functionalities) are tribo-positive; biopolymers like, cellulose, chitosan, etc. exhibit negligible triboelectricity; and some polymers (because of their functionalities having mesomeric or inducting effect) exhibit long time of tribo-charge storing capacity, but they are found to be inflexible in nature. The extracted biopolymers from various wastes (e.g., cellulose, lignin, human hair, eggshell membrane, fur, etc.), could be used as fillers for developing low-cost, flexible, bio-compatible polymer nanocomposite (Trash-to-treasure). Herein, the composite is assumed to exhibit tribo-less property (because of the possible electrostatic interaction among the filler and matrix molecule and unavailability of the functional groups to cause the static charges), biocompatibility and enhanced tactile performance. Again, some polymers (e.g., NR, silicone rubber, etc.) are supposed to exhibit controlled tribo-property via their proper functionalization and vulcanization. The project aims to minimize the irreproducibility of PNG by developing polymer biocomposite-based antistatic coatings (instead of conducting materials laden antistatic coating which may cause leakage of piezo-outputs) to be used as protective layers over the piezo-materials (commercial and in-house prepared), which will also be modified to utilize as TNG-based sustainable/reproducible tactile sensors, artificial skin, and energy harvesters with optimized filler content. The performance of the TNG will be further enhanced by incorporating the polymeric nanoparticles made of the polymers (e.g., polyacrylate) showing longer period of tribo-charge storing capacity. A low-cost measurement chamber will also be developed to standardize the working environment and efficacy of all nanogenerators. statistical analyses will be conducted to evaluate the reproducibility and sensitivity of the devices. Ultimately, the project aims to develop innovative materials and fabrication techniques to promote sustainable energy solutions and reproducible sensors to be used for different advanced application. |