Human-driven triboelectric nanogenerator via simultaneous harvesting of body-coupled energy

With the advent of IoT and micro-packaging technology, the increasing number of wearable and portable electronics presents significant challenges for battery charging and replacement. To cope with the problem, energy harvesting technologies are drawing attention. Among them, triboelectric nanogenerator is of particular interest due to its advantage of high voltage output and lightweight, straightforward design. These advantages led to extensive research in the field of portable TENG. In spite of various attempts to enhance the performance of these portable TENGs, more fundamental approaches to overcome the limitations imposed by their small size are still needed. Herein, body-coupled energy harvesting triboelectric nanogenerator, BEH-TENG is introduced which can enhance the performance of energy harvesting of portable human-driven TENGs by harvesting an additional energy source. BEH-TENG can harvest conventional triboelectric energy from the device and triboelectric energy generated in between human body and ground simultaneously, which is body-coupled energy, transferred through human body. The mechanism of BEH-TENG is applied to jump rope and has undergone optimization with various parameters. BEH-TENG harvested two energy sources successfully with a minimum offset which generated a root-mean-square power of 59.98 μW and charged a 100 μF capacitor to 1.78 V for 100 s to power commercial thermohydrometer.