Hybridized energy harvesting device based on high-performance triboelectric nanogenerator for smart agriculture applications

Smart agriculture can be deemed as the deep cross-boundary integration of modern information technologies such as Internet of things (IoTs), intelligent equipment, and big data with agriculture, among which the numerous distributed sensors play a vital role in providing precise planting management. However, the lack of efficiency and low-cost energy harvesting approaches to power distributed sensor nodes has become a severe challenge. This challenge will seriously inhibit the development of smart agriculture. Herein, a hybridized energy harvesting device (HEHD) for capturing wind and solar energy was designed by combining two electromagnetic generators (EMGs), two triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs), and two solar cells (SCs) to enable environmental energy collection. The rotation motion can be transformed into translational motion by introducing a transverse connector to link TENG and EMG, which favors the durability of the TENG. The output performance of TENGs and EMGs increases with increasing wind speed, and the open-circuit voltage (VOC) and short-circuit current (ISC) of the individual TENG and EMG can reach up to nearly 570 V, 40 μA, and 0.8 V, 1.85 mA at the 7 ms−1 wind speed, respectively. The self-powered temperature and humidity (Temp&Humid) monitoring system was established by combining the HEHD, a self-developed mobile phone application and a commercial Temp&Humid sensor, which can realize remote monitoring and multi-points connection of farmland environmental Temp&Humid data through the Internet. Moreover, a farm peripheral security alarm system based on the HEHD was constructed to achieve passive remote infrared monitoring. This work makes a beneficial attempt to realize self-powered sensor nodes, indicating broad potential for the use of TENGs in smart agriculture applications.