Investigations on the Effect of Laser Texturing of Kapton Polyimide on the Piezoelectric Response of ZnO-Based Nanogenerators

Abstract

In this work, zinc oxide–based piezoelectric nanogenerator (PENG) over the flexible Kapton polyimide (PI) substrate is developed. The device performance is improved by laser texturing of PI substrate, which increases the effective surface area of PI and adhesivity of ZnO thin film with PI substrate to improve the reliability and life span of the device. The untextured PI-based PENG generates a peak-to-peak output voltage, current, and power of 6 V, 420 nA, 2.42 μW, respectively, which increases to 15.8 V, 790 nA, and 12.51 μW, respectively, on using textured PI obtained by 60% laser spot overlap. On further increasing the laser spot overlap to 80%, the peak-to-peak output voltage, current, and power improve to 22.2 V, 1210 nA, and 26.88 μW, respectively. Therefore, as compared to the untextured-PI-based PENG, laser-textured-PI-based PENG is a promising candidate for energy-harvesting applications. © 2023 Wiley-VCH GmbH.