title: Effective energy storage from a triboelectric nanogenerator.
abstract: To sustainably power electronics by harvesting mechanical energy using nanogenerators, energy storage is essential to supply a regulated and stable electric output, which is traditionally realized by a direct connection between the two components through a rectifier. However, this may lead to low energy-storage efficiency. Here, we rationally design a charging cycle to maximize energy-storage efficiency by modulating the charge flow in the system, which is demonstrated on a triboelectric nanogenerator by adding a motion-triggered switch. Both theoretical and experimental comparisons show that the designed charging cycle can enhance the charging rate, improve the maximum energy-storage efficiency by up to 50% and promote the saturation voltage by at least a factor of two. This represents a progress to effectively store the energy harvested by nanogenerators with the aim to utilize ambient mechanical energy to drive portable/wearable/implantable electronics.
authors.affiliation: School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, USA.
authors.forename: Yunlong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zi
authors.affiliation: School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, USA.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, USA.
authors.forename: Sihong
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, USA.
authors.forename: Shengming
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, USA.
authors.forename: Zhen
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wen
authors.affiliation: School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, USA.
authors.forename: Hengyu
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.affiliation: School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, USA.|Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100083, China.
authors.forename: Zhong Lin
authors.initials: ZL
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D011211:Electric Power Supplies; D004560:Electricity; D004567:Electrodes, Implanted; D004581:Electronics; D004867:Equipment Design; D006801:Humans; D009038:Motion; D036103:Nanotechnology / Q000295:instrumentation*