A Mutual Boosting Self-Excitation Hybrid Cell for Harvesting High Entropy Energy at 32% Efficiency

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) and dielectric elastomer generators (DEGs) are potentially promising energy conversion technologies, but they still have limitations due to their own intrinsic characteristics, including the low energy output of TENGs caused by the air breakdown effect, and external polarization voltage requirement for DEGs, which severely limit their practical applications. Herein, coupling TENG with DEG is proposed to build a mutual beneficial self-excitation hybrid generator (named TDHG) for harvesting distributed and low-quality mechanical energy (high entropy energy). Experimental results demonstrate that the output charges of this TDHG are enhanced by fivefold of that of the conventional charge-excitation TENG, and continuous operation of DEG is also realized by simple mechanical triggering. More importantly, owing to the high peak power contributed by TENG and the long output pulse duration guaranteed by DEG, the TDHG realizes a much higher energy conversion efficiency of 32% in comparison to either the TENG (3.6%) or DEG (13.2%). This work proposes a new design concept for hybridized energy harvester toward highly efficient mechanical energy harvesting.