A Triboelectric Energy Harvesting Autonomous System for Internet-of-Things Applications.

In this work, an autonomous system, based on triboelectric energy harvesting is presented. The system consists of a rotary triboelectric generator (TEG), a DMOS full-wave rectifier and a buck DC-DC converter based on a silicon-controlled rectifier (SCR) switch. An ultra-low-power low-complexity output voltage regulation control is implemented in order to efficiently manage the harnessed energy and simultaneously provide regulated voltage to the connected loads. To minimize the power losses, the DMOS full-wave rectifier as well as the output voltage regulation control are implemented on a 0.18μm CMOS process. The rectifier is implemented using floating gate DMOS transistors in order to sustain large input voltages at the transistors' gate terminals. The SCR-based buck DC-DC converter is implemented with discrete components. The total power consumption is measured at 216nA at 2.25V. The overall system presents autonomous operation and does not require external power supply. The experimental results validate the proper operation of the proposed system.