Triboelectric Nanogenerator Network Integrated with Charge Excitation Circuit for Effective Water Wave Energy Harvesting

Ocean waves are considered to be one of the most promising renewable energy sources, and harvesting such energy via triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) is an effective strategy toward large-scale blue energy. However, most previous optimization schemes of TENG cannot meet the demands of practical applications. In this work, a new charge excitation circuit (CEC) with advantages of integration, high efficiency, and minimum impedance is developed specially for TENGs to harvest water wave energy. The TENG with the CEC exhibits significantly improved output performance, with a maximum power of 25.8 mW and power density of 49.3 W m(-3), and a 208 times enhanced current of 25.1 mA is achieved. Furthermore, a scheme of integrating TENG network and CECs is proposed for realizing large-scale wave energy harvesting. The charge excitation TENG network is demonstrated to successfully power a digital thermometer and a wireless communication system with mobile phone through transmitting radio frequency (RF) signals for remote environmental monitoring. This study not only offers a strategy to greatly enhance the output performance of TENG networks in water wave energy harvesting, but also provides useful guidance for constructing maritime communication platform based on blue energy toward a maritime internet of things system.