Lunar regolith simulant-based triboelectric nanogenerators: Toward sustainable energy harvesting from resources on the moon

Abstract

The exploration of extraterrestrial materials for energy harvesting, generation and storage is important for futuristic material evolution and use. Thus, study and use of extraterrestrial materials simulants becomes straightforward way to identify potential of those materials. Such as Lunar Regolith Simulants are tested as reference material to explore suitability for construction, solar cell components and beyond. However, aiming futuristic space exploration, on-site energy generator development from Lunar regolith materials is unexplored and necessary to unveil it. In this work, we introduce a lightweight, flexible triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) that uses lunar regolith simulant particles (LRPs) embedded in polydimethoxysilane (PDMS) to harvest mechanical energy as first proof-of-concept. Under cyclic contact-separation, the optimized device containing 30 wt % of