Contact Electrification of Two-Dimensional Materials

Contact electrification is a ubiquitous phenomenon that is still poorly understood. It has been proposed as a clean energy source for the Internet of Things in triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs). Recently, we proposed a microscopic model in one-dimension in order to study the dynamics of electrons between atomic chains [M. Willatzen, L. C. Lew Yan Voon, and Z.-L. Wang, Adv. Func. Mat. 1910461 (2020)]. In this talk, we present an extension of the work to include charge transfer between normal and/or topological materials in one and two dimensions in order to assess the relevance of using two-dimensional materials in the design of TENGs.