Electron Transfer as a Liquid Droplet Contacting a Polymer Surface

• Published in: ACS nano 2020-12, Vol.14 (12), p.17565-17573
• Main Authors: Zhan, Fei, Wang, Aurelia C, Xu, Liang, Lin, Shiquan, Shao, Jiajia, Chen, Xiangyu, Wang, Zhong Lin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1936-0851; 1936-086X
• DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.0c08332

It has been demonstrated that substantial electric power can be produced by a liquid-based triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG). However, the mechanisms regarding the electrification between a liquid and a solid surface remain to be extensively investigated. Here, the working mechanism of a droplet-TENG was proposed based on the study of its dynamic saturation process. Moreover, the charge-transfer mechanism at the liquid–solid interface was verified as the hybrid effects of electron transfer and ion adsorption by a simple but valid method. Thus, we proposed a model for the charge distribution at the liquid–solid interface, named Wang’s hybrid layer, which involves the electron transfer, the ionization reaction, and the van der Waals force. Our work not only proves that TENG is a probe for investigating charge transfer at interface of all phases, such as solid–solid and liquid–solid, but also may have great significance to water energy harvesting and may revolutionize the traditional understanding of the liquid–solid interface used in many fields such as electrochemistry, catalysis, colloidal science, and even cell biology.