Abstract
Triboelectric nanogenerators have attracted wide attention due to their promising capabilities of scavenging the ambient environmental mechanical energy. However, efficient energy management of the generated high-voltage for practical low-voltage applications is still under investigation. Autonomous switches are key elements for improving the harvested energy per mechanical cycle, but they are complicated to implement at such voltages higher than several hundreds of volts. This paper proposes a self-sustained and automatic hysteresis plasma switch made from silicon micromachining, and implemented in a two-stage efficient conditioning circuit for powering low-voltage devices using triboelectric nanogenerators. The hysteresis of this microelectromechanical switch is controllable by topological design and the actuation of the switch combines the principles of micro-discharge and electrostatic pulling, without the need of any power-consuming control electronic circuits. The experimental results indicate that the energy harvesting efficiency is improved by two orders of magnitude compared to the conventional full-wave rectifying circuit.
Highlights
Triboelectric nanogenerators have attracted wide attention due to their promising capabilities of scavenging the ambient environmental mechanical energy
We report a self-sustained conditioning system that allows the triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) to work at high-voltages for high-energy conversion without power-consuming electronics, using an unstable charge pump (Bennet doubler) combined with a highvoltage microelectromechanical system (MEMS) plasma switch in a 2-stage circuit
A 2-stage conditioning circuit combined with a Bennet doubler rectifier was used for improving the charge transfer while working at very high voltages for better energy conversion
Summary
Triboelectric nanogenerators have attracted wide attention due to their promising capabilities of scavenging the ambient environmental mechanical energy. This paper proposes a self-sustained and automatic hysteresis plasma switch made from silicon micromachining, and implemented in a two-stage efficient conditioning circuit for powering low-voltage devices using triboelectric nanogenerators. The output voltage of the rectifiers maximizing the converted energy per cycle must be of the same order of magnitude as the embedded triboelectret biasing voltage VTE of a TENG (typically VTE/2 for the FW bridge20), which is not compatible with the load supply It exists a maximum converted energy per cycle that is defined by (and increases with) VTE28,29, so that one may want to maximize this voltage; the latter is fundamentally defined by the triboelectric effect. Their actuation control was obtained thanks to a circuit powered by an external battery, at least for the start-up, making the system not self-sustained
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