Low Cost, Large Area, Flexible Graphene Nanocomposite Films for Energy Harvesting Applications

Abstract

In this paper, we report a robust and a low-cost spin coating approach for fabrication of large area flexible piezoelectric nanocomposite generator device for harvesting biomechanical motions. In order to develop the piezoelectric nanocomposite, ZnO and BaTiO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sub> were used as filler materials for realization of piezoelectric nanogenerator. Serial stretching and bending tests over these devices illustrated generation of maximum open-circuit voltage of ∼237 and ∼736 mV for ZnO and BaTiO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sub> , respectively. Furthermore, we also demonstrated a 2 × enhancement in output voltage performance of nanogenerator by adding graphene platelets to these diphasic piezoelectric nanocomposite systems.