One of the crucial issues for applying electret/triboelectric power generators in the Internet of Things (IoT) is to take full advantage of specific high voltage signals and enable self-powered sensing. Therefore, inspired by Miura-origami, we present an innovative origami power generator (OPG) constructed from only one piece of electret thin film. The Miura-origami architecture realizes a generator with excellent deformability and stretchability and makes it unnecessary for any auxiliary support structure during the compress-release cycle. Various parameters of the generator are intensively investigated, including the excitation accelerations, excitation displacements, numbers of power generation units and deformation degree of the device. When stimulated with 5.0 g acceleration at 15 Hz frequency, the generator with 8 generation units can obtain an instantaneous peak-to-peak voltage and a remarkable optimum peak power of 328 V and 2152 μW at 50 MΩ, respectively. In addition, the regulable shape and multiple generation modes of the device greatly improve its applicability in various vibration energy collection requirements. Based on the above results, a hexagonal electret generator integrated with six-phase OPGs is developed as a "Buoy on Sky," after which the signal waveforms generated from internal power generators are recognized with 92% accuracy through a neural network algorithm that identifies the vibration conditions of transmission lines. This work demonstrates that a fusion of origami art and energy conversion techniques can achieve a multifunctional generator design satisfying the requirements for IoT applications.
Keywords: Electrical and electronic engineering; Nanosensors.
© Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences 2023.