A study on boost chopper circuit design for thermoelectric generators

A kind of the energy harvester, the thermoelectric generator (TEG) has been focused on recently. The boost chopper circuit is used to obtain an appropriate voltage for a few mW applications whereas a few μW applications are suitable for the charge pump circuit. Since the TEG modules have a large internal resistance, there exists a maximum power point (MPP). The voltage, current, and power of the TEG fluctuate around MPP during the chopper circuit operating. This paper proposes a design method of a boost chopper circuit for the TEG modules. The boost chopper circuit should be designed with considering the inductance L with the equivalent series resistance (ESR), the fluctuation of the input voltage, and fluctuation of the output voltage. The equations for these factors are theoretically obtained. Therefore, theoretical results of this circuit are in good agreement with results of the simulation and the experiment.