Electrical engineering

Physics

Hysteresis

Fabrication

Pathology

Energy (signal processing)

Microelectromechanical systems

Energy harvesting

Mechanical energy

Electronic circuit

Engineering

Voltage

Surface micromachining

Composite material

Power (physics)

Materials science

Alternative medicine

Efficient energy use

Computer science

Quantum mechanics

Optoelectronics

Medicine

Triboelectric effect

High voltage

Nature Communications

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.

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