Energy from Waste: Triboelectric Nanogenerators from Fully Fabric Materials for Smart Textiles. An Introductory Activity for Fine Arts and Design Students

Smart textile fabrics have arisen as an emerging technology, aiming to integrate advanced functionalities into conventional fabrics. While they are highly valuable in fashion and design, a significant knowledge gap exists between the underlying physical and chemical principles of smart textiles and fashion designers, which might be unfamiliar with those concepts closely related to electronics, physics, engineering, chemistry, or material science. In this article, we present a simple pedagogical experiment as an introduction to smart textiles, focusing on triboelectrification. Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) can transform mechanical energy into electricity via friction or contact between two different layers such as two different fabrics. The activity described here involves assembling TENGs using various textile fabrics, from common fabrics, such as cotton, to recycled fabrics, such as polypropylene from face masks. By carefully selecting textile pairs according to the triboelectric series (a semiempirical approach), the output voltage can be maximized, which is sufficient to power a series of LED lights or even charge a small load, such as a capacitor. This straightforward experiment helps introduce students and researchers from various disciplines to the basic concepts and terminology of TENGs, enabling them to create a micro power generator using commonly available fabrics.