Recent progress of triboelectric nanogenerator-based power management and information processing circuit

Abstract

In recent years, the rapid development of 5G/IoT has placed increasing demands on adaptable and sustainable energy harvesting devices and sensors. Triboelectric nanogenerators have emerged as new energy harvesting and self-powered sensing devices in the field of IoT and wearable electronics due to their clean, sustainable, low-cost, and high-performance characteristics. However, as energy harvesting devices, triboelectric nanogenerators are limited by the instability and unpredictability of mechanical energy as well as their high impedance and output signal randomness, which impedes efficient energy transmission. Furthermore, also as sensors, triboelectric nanogenerators require integration with computers to process signals from various scenarios, increasing energy consumption and device size, exacerbating the difficulty of system design. Hence, there is a need to use management and processing circuits efficiently to transfer and store mechanical energy, simplify processing tasks and build sustainable sensing systems on terminal. This review provides a detailed overview of power management and information processing circuits based on triboelectric nanogenerator technology, followed by an outlook of the field's potential.