Recent Advances in Fabricating High-Performance Triboelectric Nanogenerators via Modulating Surface Charge Density

Abstract

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs), which can efficaciously convert high entropy energy in our daily lives into electricity, are a presumable and promising micro/nano energy source to drive a profusion of sensor nodes in the era of the Internet of Things. The TENG has been attracting a great deal of research attention since its inception and has been the subject of many striking developments, including defining the fundamental physical mechanisms, expanding application scenarios, and boosting surface charge density. Particularly, manufacturing TENGs with high surface charge density is crucial to further expanding their application range and accelerating their industrialization. Here, an overview of recent advances, including material optimization, circuit design, and strategy conjunction, in fabricating TENGs with high surface charge density is provided. In these topics, different strategies are retrospected in terms of enhancement mechanisms, merits, limitations, and technological development lines. Additionally, the current challenges in high-performance TENG research and the orientation of future endeavors in this field are discussed, which may shed new light on the next stage of TENG development.