Hydrophobic sisal cellulose paper-based TENG for collecting rain energy and raindrop-based sensor.

• A hydrophobic TENG based on sisal cellulose paper(SCP) was constructed to collect raindrop energy. • Both physical and chemical hydrophobic modification can effectively improve the SCP's dielectric constant. • The hydrophobic SCP-TENG modified by the chemical method is more suitable than the physical method for collecting raindrop energy. • The output electrical signal of SCP-TENG and the raindrop velocity have linear relationship. • The hydrophobic SCP-TENG can be used as raindrop-based sensors. Hydrophobic Sisal cellulose paper (SCP) was obtained by surface modification of SCP via physical adsorbing polymer and chemical grafting monomer, respectively. The influence of surface modification conditioning on the hydrophobicity, dielectric constant and dipole moment of the SCP was investigated. The results showed that the hydrophobicity and dielectric constant of the modified SCP increased with the concentration and amount of the modifiers. The output electrical performance of the TENGs assembled by the two types of hydrophobic SCP for rain energy collection was compared. The output electrical performance of the chemically modified hydrophobic SCP-TENG is higher than that of the physical modified. The maximum power density of the former reaches 8.2 mW/m2. Furthermore, based on the linear relationship between the output performance (output voltage intensity and output current intensity) of hydrophobic SCP-TENG and the droplet velocity, a raindrop-based sensor based on hydrophobic SCP-TENG was successfully constructed and estimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]