A breathable and woven hybrid energy harvester with optimized power management for sustainably powering electronics

Abstract

Wearable hybrid energy harvesters show enormous potential for supplying power to wearable electronics since they circumvent the issue of discontinuous source energy of single energy harvesters and thereby supply more available energy. The hybridization of triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) and biofuel cells (BFCs) is promising; however, there are two major challenges. First, the two energy harvesters’ outputs are severely mismatched, but optimized power management and design principles have not yet been demonstrated. Second, previously reported devices are based on planar structures and lack breathability. Here, we develop a breathable and woven hybrid energy harvester (BWHEH) that is knitted with a textile TENG and fiber BFCs. A power management circuit is specially designed to match and optimize the output direct current power supply, which can enlarge the output power by ∼46.1 times, significantly lowering the effective internal impedance of the power source and improving the power delivery for common wearable loading conditions. The design principles of the power management for the TENG–BFC hybrid are thoroughly revealed. The wearable BWHEH self-charging power system can sustainably power various portable electronics by harvesting biomechanical and biochemical energy. This work provides a new route for energy harvesting and offers fundamental guidance for high-power hybrid energy harvesters.