• Ceramist
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.54-88
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• 2020

Global effort has resulted in tremendous progress with energy harvesters that extract mechanical energy from ambient sources, convert it to electrical energy, and use it for systems such as wrist watches, mobile electronic devices, wireless sensor nodes, health monitoring, and biosensors. However, harvesting a single energy source only still pauses a great challenge in driving sustainable and maintenance-free monitoring and sensing devices. Over the last few years, research on high-performance mechanical energy harvesters at the micro and nanoscale has been directed toward the development of hybrid devices that either aim to harvest mechanical energy in addition to other types of energies simultaneously or to exploit multiple mechanisms to more effectively harvest mechanical energy. Herein, we appraise the rational designs for multiple energy harvesting, specifically state-of-the-art hybrid mechanical energy harvesters that employ multiple piezoelectric and triboelectric mechanisms to efficiently harvest mechanical energy. We identify the critical material parameters and device design criteria that lead to high-performance hybrid mechanical energy harvesters. Finally, we address the future perspectives and remaining challenges in the field.