A consistent and reliable power supply is critical for Mars exploration missions and habitability. The idea is to take advantage of Mars environment to convert wind energy into electrical energy and use it as auxiliary energy source of solar cells.
The usual electromagnetic generators (EG) are unsuitable for planetary exploration due to their heavy weight, leading to high launch costs. The alternative to EG could be the Triboelectric Harvesters (TENG), a relatively new technology (2012) which converts external mechanical energy into electricity by a conjunction of the triboelectric effect and electrostatic induction.
The aim of the idea is to develop an efficient and robust TENG demonstrator that can efficiently operate under MARS environmental conditions. It requires the development of advanced triboelectric materials that have a combination of excellent tribological (low friction a wear performance), mechanical (impact resistance), triboelectric properties (triboelectrification and interfacial conductivity) and energy generation density under those extreme conditions. Additionally, easy integration into a low weight wind turbine demonstrator is considered a critical part of the system validation. A combination of low friction and high inherent triboelectric charge density materials will be integrated into a TENG architecture operating under a freestanding mode. In particular, Hydrogenated DLC and PTFE are selected as dielectric pair due to their highest power density as well as their potential use as solid lubricants/films under the Mars environment. Abrasion resistance, lubrication ability, durability and aging are current limitations of those materials that will be solved by optimising the coating architecture (adhesion layer optimisation and multilayer architecture to realise residual stresses) and material microstructure (considering PTFE composites) based on lab-scaled tribology testing results.
