Autonomous cantilever buck switch for ultra-efficient power management of triboelectric nanogenerator

Abstract

Power management is an efficacious route to promote the development of triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs), in which the buck switch for efficient energy extraction has always been a challenge. Here, we propose a three-port cantilever buck switch which can autonomously release energy from the TENG in maximum by the generated electrostatic field of the TENG. The influence of closing voltage of the buck switch on different structure parameters has been thoroughly investigated. The U-Q curve indicates that the optimal energy extraction can reach 90.86%, and the matched impedance of the TENG is reduced from 60 MΩ to 470 kΩ. Compared to the output power at matched impedance, the average power managed by this three-port cantilever buck switch is increased by 1.554 times, which can power the Bluetooth device, electronic watch, calculator and thermo-meter. This work has realized ultra-efficient power management of TENG by leveraging an autonomous cantilever buck switch, which can contribute to the efficient utilization of micromechanical energy.