Gas discharge tubes for significantly boosting the instantaneous current and active power of load driven by triboelectric nanogenerators

Abstract

Based on impedance matching of the power management circuit (PMC) with a switch, the instantaneous peak power of triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) is significantly improved, recently. However, a high output power of TENGs does not generally mean a high active power consumed by the load, that is low energy utilization efficiency. Here, leveraging plasma discharge, we propose an effective approach by means of a gas discharge tube (GDT), as a rapid switch of a millisecond, resulting in boosting over 4000 times of peak current up to 170.7 mA at a low resistance of 5 Ω. When the TENG runs at 20 Hz, the pulse current occurs every 571.4 ms, and the active peak power also increases to 165.5 mW. With such a high-power output, a 16 W light group can be lit wirelessly even when blocked by a human hand. As commercial discrete components, the GDTs are available in a variety of models, providing a new, cheap, and directly exploitable peak gain option. Similar to diodes, capacitors, and resistors, we are firmly convinced that GDTs will be widely utilized in PMC for TENG.