A wind-driven rotating micro-hybrid nanogenerator for powering environmental monitoring devices based on a brush-type triboelectric unit

Abstract

Abstract The rapid rise of the IoT (Internet of Things) technology and microelectronics technology has promoted the development of sensors to ultra-low power consumption. However, for conventional wired power supply and chemical battery power supply, there are difficulties in wiring, inconvenient battery replacement and environmental pollution problems, so there is an urgent need for a green power supply. The low cost and simple structure of TENG (Triboelectric nanogenerator) have attracted much attention from researchers. However, for most of the existing TENG, there are some problems such as narrow operating frequency range, short life of TENG, insufficient traditional flexible friction contact, and serious wear of rigid friction contact. Herein, we propose a rotary brush-type triboelectric-electromagnetic hybrid nanogenerator. Through the experimental tests, the TENG part can output the maximum power of 0.88 mW under the external load of 8 MΩ at 400 rpm (wind speed of about 8.3 m/s). The EMG (Electromagnetic Generator) part can output the maximum power of 15.5 mW under external load of 360 Ω. The LED lighting test proves that the generator broadens the frequency of energy harvesting. In the capacitor charging test, the high voltage characteristics of tribological power generation play the advantages of continuous voltage boost, and the high current characteristics of electromagnetic power generation play the advantages of high power. The hybrid nanogenerator can realize the wind energy harvesting under the broadband wind speed of 3 m/s~14 m/s. At a wind speed of 5.6 m/s, the hybrid nanogenerator ran at about 225 rpm and successfully powered the anemometer after 21 s. After 80,000 cycles, the maximum open circuit voltage only drops by 5.6%, which proves that the rotary TENG unit has a long generation life, and can realize the harvesting of wind energy and the power supply of wind speed sensor.