A triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is a device that converts mechanical energy into electrical energy, and has been considered as a substitute for continuous power supply due to its high performance, simple structure and eco-friendliness. Recently, it is important to develop a TENG using a non-toxic material in order to use it as a power source for wearable, attachable, and body-embeddable electronics. Here, we developed a human friendly TENG using polyvinyl chloride (PVC) gel containing acetyl tributyl citrate (ATBC), a non-toxic plasticizer. PVC gels were fabricated using various ratios of PVC and ATBC, and optimized by investigating dielectric properties, surface potential, output performance, and durability. The PVC gel based TENG generates output signals of 73 V and 4.3 μA, i.e., a 5-fold enhancement in the output power compared to pristine PVC-based TENG. In addition, the PVC gel can be stretched over 500% of strain. This study is expected to be helpful in the future development of non-toxic wearable TENG.

We investigated and compared two methods of in-situ oxidation and chemical etching treatment (CET) to remove the boron rich layer (BRL). The BRL is generally formed during boron doping process. It has to be controlled in order not to degrade carrier lifetime and reduce electrical properties. A boron emitter is formed using BBr3 liquid source at 930℃. After that, in-situ oxidation was followed by injecting oxygen of 1,000 sccm into the furnace during ramp down step and compared with CET using a mixture of acid solution for a short time. Then, we analyzed passivation effect by depositing Al2O3. The results gave a carrier lifetime of 110.9 ㎲, an open-circuit voltage (Voc) of 635 mV at in-situ oxidation and a carrier lifetime of 188.5 ㎲, an Voc of 650 mV at CET. As a result, CET shows better properties than in-situ oxidation because of removing BRL uniformly.

In this paper, semiconducting shield specimens for a DC cable is fabricated and characterized by measurement of volume resistance, tensile strength, and the coefficient of expansion to show the electrical and mechanical characteristics of the semiconducting shield. Due to the PTC phenomenon, the volume resistance at 25℃ increases rapidly in comparison to the volume resistance at 90℃. Since the compounding ratio of carbon black is low, the tensile strength and density become lower and the coefficient of expansion is increased. As the general specification of the tensile strength and density is 0.8 kgf/㎟ and 150%, respectively, the fabricated specimen in this paper has excellent mechanical characteristic.