Flexible dielectrics that harvest mechanical energy via electrostatic effects are excellent candidates as power sources for wearable electronics or autonomous sensors. The integration of a soft dielectric composite (polydimethylsiloxane PDMS-carbon black CB) into two mechanical energy harvesters is here presented. Both are based on a similar cantilever beam but work on different harvesting principles: variable capacitor and triboelectricity. We show that without an external bias the triboelectric beam harvests a net density power of 0.3 \(\upmu \mathrm{W}/{\mathrm{cm}}^{2}\) under a sinusoidal acceleration of 3.9g at 40 Hz. In a variable capacitor configuration, a bias of 0.15 \(\mathrm{V}/\upmu \mathrm{m}\) is required to get the same energy harvesting performance under the same working conditions. As variable capacitors’ harvesting performance are quadratically dependent on the applied bias, increasing the bias allows the system to harvest energy much more efficiently than the triboelectric one. The present results make CB/PDMS composites promising for autonomous portable multifunctional systems and intelligent sensors.

通过静电效应收集机械能的柔性电介质是可穿戴电子设备或自主传感器电源的绝佳候选者。本文介绍了将软介电复合材料（聚二甲基硅氧烷 PDMS-炭黑 CB）集成到两个机械能量收集器中。两者都基于类似的悬臂梁，但工作原理不同：可变电容器和摩擦电。我们表明，在没有外部偏置的情况下，摩擦电束在 40 Hz 下3.9 g的正弦加速度下收获的净密度功率为 0.3 \(\upmu \mathrm{W}/{\mathrm{cm}}^{2}\)。在可变电容器配置中，需要0.15 \(\mathrm{V}/\upmu \mathrm{m}\)的偏置才能在相同工作条件下获得相同的能量收集性能。由于可变电容器的收集性能与所施加的偏压成二次方关系，因此增加偏压可以使系统比摩擦电系统更有效地收集能量。目前的结果使得 CB/PDMS 复合材料有望用于自主便携式多功能系统和智能传感器。