Unstable charge-pump for signal rectification of sliding tribo-electret generators with interdigitated grating electrodes

In this work, we demonstrate that an unstable charge pump can be an effective conditioning circuit for sliding triboelectret energy (nano) generators (TENGs) power generation and extraction, as long as we can electrically connect the sliding electrode. Studied TENG structure has two fixed interdigitated grating electrodes and a third mobile electrode, which create two variable capacitors in antiphase. A Bennet’s charge doubler electronic circuit is applied at the outputs of the TENG and two distinct cases (either one or two variable capacitors) are compared with the purpose of inspecting the efficiency and working conditions. In addition to the experimental results, a Spice simulation models are created to be compared with.