Local temperature enhanced tribovoltaic effect

The tribovoltaic effect is a newly discovered physical phenomenon at the sliding interface of two semiconductor materials. However, its mechanism is still under investigation, and recent research on the effects of temperature provides a unique way to understand the tribovoltaic effect. Here, a pulsed infrared irradiation of atomic force microscopy-infrared spectroscopy (AFM-IR) is used to generate a local temperature increase from 0 to 140 °C to stimulate the “flash temperature” at sliding interfaces. The results show that when the temperature rise is about 140 °C, the tribovoltaic current can be increased for 25-fold. The local temperature rise has an enhancement on the tribovoltaic effect with a linear relationship between the instantaneous temperature rise and the tribo-current increment. Based the results, an energy band model is proposed, in which impurity states introduced by thermal decomposition of polystyrene sulfonate (PSS^-) is considered to be one of the main reasons to promote the carrier transition. On the other hand, local temperature rise can bring stronger bonding interactions and produce more “bindington” to increase the generation efficiency of the electron-hole pairs. The findings have important guiding significance for improving the output, and developing applications of the tribovoltaic effect through friction interface design.