Universal power management strategy for triboelectric nanogenerator

Highlights: • A universal power management strategy for TENG is proposed, including maximized energy transfer, DC buck conversion, and self-management mechanism. • With the implemented tribotronic energy extractor and power management module, 85% energy can be autonomously released from TENG and output as a steady and continuous DC voltage on load resistance. • The universality of the power management strategy is demonstrated for harvesting human kinetic and environmental mechanical energy. • The tribotronics has been extended and a new branch of power-tribotronics is proposed for manageable triboelectric power by electronics. Effective power management has always been the difficulty and bottleneck for practicability of triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG). Here we propose a universal power management strategy for TENG by maximizing energy transfer, direct current (DC) buck conversion, and self-management mechanism. With the implemented power management module (PMM), about 85% energy can be autonomously released from the TENG and output as a steady and continuous DC voltage on the load resistance. The DC component and ripple have been systematically investigated with different circuit parameters. At a low frequency of 1 Hz with the PMM, the matched impedance of the TENG has been converted from 35 MΩ to 1 MΩ at 80% efficiency, and the stored energy has been dramatically improved in charging a capacitor. The universality of this strategy has been greatly demonstrated by various TENGs with the PMM for harvesting human kinetic and environmental mechanical energy. The universal power management strategy for TENG is promising for a complete micro-energy solution in powering wearable electronics and industrial wireless networks. With the new coupling mode of triboelectricity and semiconductor in the PMM, the tribotronics has been extended and a new branch of power-tribotronics is proposed for manageable triboelectric power by electronics.