A paper-based electrostatic kinetic energy harvester with stacked multiple electret films made of electrospun polymer nanofibers

This paper reports the first flexible electrostatic kinetic energy harvester (e-KEH) with electret nanofibrous films obtained by electrospinning and paper-based electrodes. The nanofibrous electret outperforms plenary thin film Parylene in the storage stability of charge: the surface potential is stabilized within 1 day, without any obvious minishing during the following 9 days. The output power of the device is improved by implementing multiple electret layers, where the optimal number of electret layer is 3. With a finger tapping activation, this first prototype with the optimal configuration gives a maximum peak power of 45.6 μW with the optimal load of 16 MΩ. Working with a full-wave diode rectifier and a storage capacitor of 10nF, the voltage reaches 8.5 V with 450 strokes.