Mechanical energy harvesters with tensile efficiency of 17.4% and torsional efficiency of 22.4% based on homochirally plied carbon nanotube yarns

Efficient mechanical energy harvesting approaches are needed. Here, Zhang et al. develop a plied carbon nanotube yarn that harvests mechanical energy upon stretching and lateral deformations, achieving 17.4 and 22.4% efficiencies for tensile and torsional harvesting, respectively. Improved methods are needed for harvesting mechanical energy. Coiled carbon nanotube yarns, termed twistrons, use stretch-induced changes in electrochemical capacitance to convert mechanical energy to electricity. Elongation of the yarn produces such large lateral Poisson's ratios that the yarns are highly stretch densified, which contributes to harvesting. Here we report plied twistrons, instead of coiled, which increase the energy conversion efficiency of the yarns from 7.6% to 17.4% for stretch and to 22.4% for twist. This is attributed to additional harvesting mechanisms by yarn stretch and lateral deformations. For harvesting between 2 and 120 Hz, our plied twistron has higher gravimetric peak power and average power than has been reported for non-twistron, material-based mechanical energy harvesters. We sew the twistrons into textiles for sensing and harvesting human motion, deploy them in salt water for harvesting ocean wave energy and use them to charge supercapacitors.