Hybridized electromagnetic-triboelectric nanogenerator

Abstract

Due to the energy crisis, more and more research works have been focused on the renewable energies in the environment for solving the issues of the power sources. Harvesting mechanical energy in our daily life has been attracting more and more attentions due to its potential capability for providing power source to drive some sensors without the external Li-ion batteries. As one of the most commonly available energies, mechanical energy can be effectively converted into electricity by using some energy scavenging devices, such as electromagnetic generators, piezoelectric nanognerators, and triboelectric nanogenerators. Many researches have been achieved to high-efficient conversion from mechanical energy into electricity. By choosing the different materials or changing the structure of the energy harvesting device, the output performance of the device can be enhanced. New approaches need to be exploited for largely increasing the conversion efficiency of the energy harvesting devices. A hybridized electromagnetic-triboelectric nanogenerator is to utilize electromagnetic and triboelectric nanogenerators to simultaneously scavenge mechanical energy from one mechanical motion. As compared with the individual energy harvesting units, the hybridized nanogenerator has much larger output power, higher conversion efficiency so that it can be used to solve the power source issue of some electronic devices with larger power consumption. The hybridized nanogenerators have the potential applications in self-powered sensors, wearable devices, and networks. The recent development of hybridized nanogenerator will be described in this review.