Ultrahigh Performance Triboelectric Nanogenerator Enabled by Charge Transmission in Interfacial Lubrication and Potential Decentralization Design

Efficient energy conversion mechanism and energy storage strategy for triboelectric nanogenerators

Energy management strategy is the essential approach for achieving high energy utilization efficiency of triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) due to their ultra-high intrinsic impedance. However, the proven management efficiency in practical applications remains low, and the output regulation functionality is still lacking. Herein, we propose a detailed energy transfer and extraction mechanism addressing voltage and charge losses caused by the crucial switches in energy management circuits. The energy conversion efficiency is increased by 8.5 times through synergistical optimization of TENG and switch configurations. Furthermore, a TENG-based power supply with energy storage and regularization functions is realized through system circuit design, demonstrating the stable powering electronic devices under irregular mechanical stimuli. A rotating TENG that only works for 21 s can make a hygrothermograph work stably for 417 s. Even under hand driving, various types of TENGs can consistently provide stable power to electronic devices such as calculators and mini-game consoles. This work provides an in-depth energy transfer and conversion mechanism between TENGs and energy management circuits, and also addresses the technical challenge in converting unstable mechanical energy into stable and usable electricity in the TENG field.

Research Progress in Fluid Energy Collection Based on Friction Nanogenerators

In recent decades, the development of electronic technology has provided opportunities for the Internet of Things, biomedicine, and energy harvesting. One of the challenges of the Internet of Things in the electrification era is energy supply. Centralized energy supply has been tested over hundreds of years of history, and its advantages such as ideal output power and stable performance are obvious, but it cannot meet the specific needs of the Internet of Things, and distributed energy supply also has a large demand. Since the invention of nanogenerators, another promising solution for fluid energy harvesting has been opened up. The triboelectric nanogenerator is an emerging platform technology for electromechanical energy conversion, which can realize the collection of fluid energy such as wind energy and wave energy. In this paper, we first introduce the fundamentals of triboelectric nanogenerators and their applications in wind and wave energy harvesting devices. We then discuss the methods of device optimization in the next development of TENG and conclude by considering the future prospects and challenges for triboelectric nanogenerator harvesting devices.

Multidiscipline Applications of Triboelectric Nanogenerators for the Intelligent Era of Internet of Things

In the era of 5G and the Internet of things (IoTs), various human-computer interaction systems based on the integration of triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) and IoTs technologies demonstrate the feasibility of sustainable and self-powered functional systems. The rapid development of intelligent applications of IoTs based on TENGs mainly relies on supplying the harvested mechanical energy from surroundings and implementing active sensing, which have greatly changed the way of human production and daily life. This review mainly introduced the TENG applications in multidiscipline scenarios of IoTs, including smart agriculture, smart industry, smart city, emergency monitoring, and machine learning-assisted artificial intelligence applications. The challenges and future research directions of TENG toward IoTs have also been proposed. The extensive developments and applications of TENG will push forward the IoTs into an energy autonomy fashion.