Ridwan Mohamad, Gasulla Manel, Reverter Ferran
Department of Electronic Engineering, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-Barcelona Tech, 08860 Castelldefels, Barcelona, Spain.
Sensors (Basel). 2025 Apr 15;25(8):2484. doi: 10.3390/s25082484.
For an extensive and sustainable deployment of technological ecosystems such as the Internet of Things, it is a must to leverage the free energy available in the environment to power the autonomous sensors. Among the different alternatives, thermal energy harvesters based on thermoelectric generators (TEGs) are an attractive solution for those scenarios in which a gradient of temperature is present. In such a context, this article reviews the operating principle of TEGs and then the applications proposed in the literature in the last years. These applications are subclassified into five categories: domestic, industrial, natural heat, wearable, and others. In each category, a comprehensive comparison is carried out, including the thermal, mechanical, and electrical information of each case. Finally, an identification of the challenges and opportunities of research in the field of TEGs applied to low-power sensor nodes is exposed.
为了广泛且可持续地部署物联网等技术生态系统，利用环境中可用的自由能为自主传感器供电是必不可少的。在不同的选择中，基于热电发电机（TEG）的热能采集器对于存在温度梯度的场景来说是一种有吸引力的解决方案。在此背景下，本文回顾了TEG的工作原理，然后介绍了过去几年文献中提出的应用。这些应用被细分为五类：家用、工业、自然热、可穿戴和其他。在每一类中，都进行了全面比较，包括每个案例的热、机械和电气信息。最后，揭示了应用于低功耗传感器节点的TEG领域研究的挑战和机遇。
