This study aimed to demonstrate an improved electrode configuration on the device for a larger scale water droplet energy harvesting, where the electrode is a commonly known item, the stapler pin. By using a single stapler pin positioned vertically on a hydrophobic surface device, the average peak short circuit current of 1.759 µA can be generated by a single water droplet, showing an improvement of output by 55.42 times in comparison to previous device design. For the device fabrication, due to the small base area of the stapler pin, the electrodes can be arranged easily in an array pattern on the device. From the experimental results, a 9 × 9 cm² device with an array of 4 × 4 electrodes can generate an instantaneous peak power output of 0.116 mW, corresponding to an area power density of 47.7 W/m². The power output was measured across a 5 GΩ external load resistor with a water droplet flow rate of 19.79 mL/s and showered on the device from a height of 16 cm. Furthermore, different electrode configurations like all-grounded, interdigital and checkered-like were studied and the checkered-like electrode configuration has the highest output among them. Overall, the above findings not only provide useful information to scale up the energy harvesting capability of the device but also demonstrated the simple and low-cost fabrication of the device. More significantly, an improved electrode configuration was introduced in this study, which is different from the current water droplet energy harvesting devices to harvest significantly larger amount of energy.

这项研究旨在证明设备上改进的电极配置，可用于更大规模的水滴能量收集，其中电极是众所周知的钉书钉。通过使用垂直放置在疏水表面设备上的单个订书钉，单个水滴可以产生1.759 µA的平均峰值短路电流，与以前的设备设计相比，输出提高了55.42倍。对于装置的制造，由于订书钉的基部面积小，因此电极可以容易地以阵列图案布置在装置上。根据实验结果，具有4×4电极阵列的9×9 cm ²器件可以产生0.116 mW的瞬时峰值功率输出，对应于47.7 W / m的面积功率密度²。在5GΩ外部负载电阻器上以19.79 mL / s的水滴流速测量功率输出，并从16 cm的高度喷洒到设备上。此外，研究了诸如全接地，叉指和方格状的不同电极配置，其中方格状电极配置具有最高的输出。总体而言，以上发现不仅为扩大设备的能量收集能力提供了有用的信息，而且证明了该设备的简单且低成本的制造。更重要的是，这项研究中引入了一种改进的电极配置，这与当前的水滴能量收集设备不同，它可以收集大量的能量。