Contact electrification at gas-solid interface via pulsed gas jets

<h2>Summary</h2> Contact electrification (CE), which involves charge transfer between materials, plays a vital role in high-entropy energy harvesting. However, the factors influencing gas-solid interfacial CE and its underlying mechanisms remain underexplored, which can be attributed to the weak intermolecular interactions and the compressibility of gases. This study introduces a single-electrode-mode gas-solid triboelectric nanogenerator (GS-TENG), developed by utilizing pulsed gas jets impacting metal electrodes to enhance the gas-solid interaction, thereby capturing electrical signals generated by CE between periodically compressed gas and aluminum foil. Additionally, density functional theory (DFT) calculations investigate how adsorption at the gas-solid interface affects electronic state density distribution and build-in electric fields within materials, elucidating the mechanism of electron directional transfer under gas impact. These findings advance our knowledge of interaction and charge transfer at the gas-solid interface. It could also provide valuable insights into the optimization and advancement of CE-based GS-TENGs for energy harvesting and self-powered sensing.