title: Flexible hybrid energy cell for simultaneously harvesting thermal, mechanical, and solar energies.
abstract: We report the first flexible hybrid energy cell that is capable of simultaneously or individually harvesting thermal, mechanical, and solar energies to power some electronic devices. For having both the pyroelectric and piezoelectric properties, a polarized poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) film-based nanogenerator (NG) was used to harvest thermal and mechanical energies. Using aligned ZnO nanowire arrays grown on the flexible polyester (PET) substrate, a ZnO-poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) heterojunction solar cell was designed for harvesting solar energy. By integrating the NGs and the solar cells, a hybrid energy cell was fabricated to simultaneously harvest three different types of energies. With the use of a Li-ion battery as the energy storage, the harvested energy can drive four red light-emitting diodes (LEDs).
authors.affiliation: School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0245, USA.
authors.forename: Ya
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Hulin
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Guang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Sangmin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Zong-Hong
authors.initials: ZH
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Zhong Lin
authors.initials: ZL
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D011211:Electric Power Supplies; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D055617:Micro-Electrical-Mechanical Systems / Q000295:instrumentation*; D053758:Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry*; D012993:Solar Energy; D013314:Stress, Mechanical; D018511:Systems Integration; D014159:Transducers