Self-Powered Vibration Sensing and Energy Harvesting via Series-Resistor-Enhanced Triboelectric Nanogenerators with Charge Compensation for Autonomous Alarm Systems

The ability to efficiently harvest energy while accurately sensing signals with a single device is a critical focus in self-powered vibration monitoring systems and an urgent requirement for the highly integrated development of the Internet of Things (IoT). This work presents a triboelectric nanogenerator that combines energy harvesting with vibration signal sensing (SE-TENG). By connecting a sensing resistor with a sensing triboelectric nanogenerator (S-TENG) in series and using the S-TENG as a pump-TENG to provide charge to the energy harvesting triboelectric nanogenerator (E-TENG), this approach effectively utilizes the energy from the S-TENG component, reducing energy loss. Under vibration excitation with 0.6 mm amplitude, the output voltage of SE-TENG remains above 200 V in 12–30 Hz. Additionally, we implement an external limiter strategy to limit the displacement of the moving part, which optimizes the waveform of the sensing signal. Based on SE-TENG, we have successfully realized self-driven wireless temperature and humidity monitoring, self-driven vibration frequency sensing alarm, and self-driven amplitude monitoring alarm. This work provides a new idea for TENG to get both energy and signal in the field of vibration energy collection and sensing, and has potential application in the integrated development of the IoT.