Converting Biomechanical Energy into Portable Power Supply for Smart Wearable Electronics - Published in Advanced Energy Materials
Professor Jae Yeong Park and his research team succeeded in developing a hybridized generator as a universal portable power supply by harvesting human biomechanical energy for smart/wearable electronics. Portable power sources capable of harvesting biomechanical energy are a promising modern approach to reduce battery dependency. The hybridized generator is a novel elastic impact‐based device to effectively harvest biomechanical energy from diverse human activities outdoors. Through the rational integration of a nonlinear electromagnetic generator with two contact‐mode triboelectric nanogenerators, the proposed (Elastic impact-based non-resonant hybridized generator) EINR‐HG generates hybrid electrical output simultaneously under the same mechanical excitations. The research team utilized special flux concentrator for improving the electromagnetic performance while using nanowire‐nanofiber surface modification optimized the triboelectric performance. This newly developed portable energy harvester can deliver an outstanding normalized power density of 3.13 mW cm−3 g−2 across a matching resistance of 1.5 kΩ at 6 Hz under 1 g acceleration. Under human motion testing, it generates an optimal output power of 131.4 mW with horizontal handshaking. The research team said that, “This kind of hybrid nanogenerator has massive potential of harvesting biomechanical energy for powering personal electronics and portable healthcare monitoring devices". The team successfully demonstrated driving commercial smart electronics such as smart-bands and smartphones using this universal hybridized generator.
The work has been published in Advanced Energy Materials (IF: 24.884) in 03 Feb 2020. The research article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1002/aenm.201903663 .
The first author of this work, Mr. Toyabur is currently studying his PhD in energy harvesting. The research team includes SMS Rana, Md Salauddin, Pukar Maharjan and Trilochan Bhatta under the supervision of Professor Park J. Yeong. This research was supported by the Bio & Medical Technology Development Program of the National Research Foundation (NRF) grant funded by the Korean government (MSIT) (NRF‐2017M3A9F1031270).
