Recent Progress in Self-Powered Gas Sensors

Small, maintenance-free and portable self-powered systems especially self-powered sensors have been widely used. Self-powered systems provide electric energy for various sensors by harvesting environmental energy. Therefore, it is very meaningful to develop self-powered gas sensors by harvesting clean energy, such as wind energy, mechanical energy, solar energy, and so on. The realization of self-powered sensors generally has two approaches:the first approach is to develop environmental energy harvesting devices for driving the traditional sensors; the other is to develop self-powered sensors that can actively generate electrical signal by itself as a response to stimulation from the ambient environment. The structure design, operation principle and performance of several self-powered gas sensors that are driven by wind energy, mechanical energy, and solar energy are introduced systemically. This paper provide a reference for integrative self-powered gas sensors in the future.