Progress in TENG technology—A journey from energy harvesting to nanoenergy and nanosystem

Abstract

Triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) technology is a promising research field for energy harvesting and nanoenergy and nanosystem (NENS) in the aspect of mechanical, electrical, optical, acoustic, fluidic, and so on. This review systematically reports the progress of TENG technology, in terms of energy-boosting, emerging materials, self-powered sensors, NENS, and its further integration with other potential technologies. Starting from TENG mechanisms including the ways of charge generation and energy-boosting, we introduce the applications from energy harvesters to various kinds of self-powered sensors, that is, physical sensors, chemical/gas sensors. After that, further applications in NENS are discussed, such as blue energy, human-machine interfaces (HMIs), neural interfaces/implanted devices, and optical interface/wearable photonics. Moving to new research directions beyond TENG, we depict hybrid energy harvesting technologies, dielectric-elastomer-enhancement, self-healing, shape-adaptive capability, and self-sustained NENS and/or internet of things (IoT). Finally, the outlooks and conclusions about future development trends of TENG technologies are discussed toward multifunctional and intelligent systems.