A Hybrid Electromagnetic-triboelectric Nanogenerator as a Self-powered Sensor for Moving Directions

Nanogenerators can successfully harvest low-frequency environment energy to provide output power in microwatt to milliwatt level for small-scale power devices that are portable, wireless, and periodic active. A proposed hybrid electromagnetic-triboelectric nanogenerator (EMG-TENG) for harvesting low-frequency mechanical energy can work as a self-powered sensor for moving directions. The hybrid EMG-TENG integrates an EMG unit (two EMGs connected in serial), a vertical contact separation TENG unit (two cells connected in parallel) and a freestanding TENG. Both EMG and TENG signals are utilized to distinguish down, up, right and left directions by observing peaks of the signals collected from the oscilloscope.