A Triboelectric Energy Harvesting IC With High-Voltage Synchronous Electric Charge Extraction Strategy and Superior Systematic Efficiency

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs), as emerging mechanical energy harvesters, have attracted extensive research interests. Achieving maximum energy output of TENG requires to release its intrinsic charge with the ultrahigh open-circuit voltage (~several hundred volts), thus the efficient power management of TENG is more than difficult. In this paper, we present the first high-voltage triboelectric energy management implementation based on synchronous electric charge extraction (SECE) strategy. We combine a synchronizing signal generation IC with a few off-chip components, ensuring the input voltage of the system can reach 300 V, greatly higher than previous work. The proposed IC is fabricated in 180-nm technology with an active area of 0.076 mm2. Specifically, a sensitive peak detector with noise suppression module ensures the effective energy harvesting from 1 Hz to 5 Hz mechanical motions. Meanwhile, a designed nA current source help to reduce the circuit power consumption to as low as 1.56~\mu W @ 5 Hz. Moreover, the system can operate with cold start-up without any external power supply. The measurement results show that the proposed circuit achieves a peak systematic efficiency \boldsymbol {\eta }_{sys} of 51.2% (7.56 V @ C_{store} = 22~\mu F).