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

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Employing a MEMS plasma switch for conditioning high-voltage kinetic energy harvesters.

Advanced designs for output improvement of triboelectric nanogenerator system

Programmed-triboelectric nanogenerators—A multi-switch regulation methodology for energy manipulation

Harnessing energy from spring suspension systems with a compressive-mode high-power-density piezoelectric transducer

The triboelectricity of the human body

https://hal-upec-upem.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02295416/document

A new type of triboelectric nanogenerator with self-actuated series-to-parallel electrical interface based on self-synchronized mechanical switches for exponential charge accumulation in a capacitor

In this work, we demonstrate that the use of self-synchronized mechanical switches in replacement of diodes into electrostatic vibration energy harvesters (e-VEH) can lead to better power generation. Indeed, mechanical switches have the advantage of no leakage current and no threshold voltage. As a proof of concept, we use the Bennet's doubler electrostatic generator. The proposed e-VEH is composed of two variable capacitors triggered by a central electrode taken as an inertial mass. Ambient vibrations induce inertial forces on the central electrode, as a result a voltage doubling is obtained at each operating cycle. The mechanical switches are directly fixed to the moving electrode. In addition, no dedicated pre-charge is required: the system starts with ambient electrical charges. The device is fabricated and tested under harmonic motion. A comparison between the proposed design and those using diodes under the same operating conditions shows an experimental direct increase of the harvested electrical power of around 28%.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/773/1/012038/pdf

M. A. Ben Ouanes

Papers

A new type of triboelectric nanogenerator with self-actuated series-to-parallel electrical interface based on self-synchronized mechanical switches for exponential charge accumulation in a capacitor

Design and test of a Bennet's doubler device with mechanical switches for vibrational energy harvesting

Charge Doubler Vibration Energy Harvester Using Self-Synchronized mechanical switches