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Serious climate changes and energy-related environmental problems are currently critical issues in the world. In order to reduce carbon emissions and save our environment, renewable energy harvesting technologies will serve as a key solution in the near future. Among them, triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs), which is one of the most promising mechanical energy harvesters by means of contact electrification phenomenon, are explosively developing due to abundant wasting mechanical energy sources and a number of superior advantages in a wide availability and selection of materials, relatively simple device configurations, and low-cost processing. Significant experimental and theoretical efforts have been achieved toward understanding fundamental behaviors and a wide range of demonstrations since its report in 2012. As a result, considerable technological advancement has been exhibited and it advances the timeline of achievement in the proposed roadmap. Now, the technology has reached the stage of prototype development with verification of performance beyond the lab scale environment toward its commercialization. In this review, distinguished authors in the world worked together to summarize the state of the art in theory, materials, devices, systems, circuits, and applications in TENG fields. The great research achievements of researchers in this field around the world over the past decade are expected to play a major role in coming to fruition of unexpectedly accelerated technological advances over the next decade.

As an emerging technology to convert environmental high‐entropy energy into electrical energy, triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) has great demands for further enhancing the service lifetime and output performance in practical applications. Here, an ultra‐robust and high‐performance rotational triboelectric nanogenerator (R‐TENG) by bearing charge pumping is proposed. The R‐TENG composes of a pumping TENG (P‐TENG), an output TENG (O‐TENG), a voltage‐multiplying circuit (VMC), and a buffer capacitor. The P‐TENG is designed with freestanding mode based on a rolling ball bearing, which can also act as the rotating mechanical energy harvester. The output low charge from the P‐TENG is accumulated and pumped to the non‐contact O‐TENG, which can simultaneously realize ultralow mechanical wear and high output performance. The matched instantaneous power of R‐TENG is increased by 32 times under 300 r/min. Furthermore, the transferring charge of R‐TENG can remain 95% during 15 days (6.4 × 106 cycles) continuous operation. This work presents a realizable method to further enhance the durability of TENG, which would facilitate the practical applications of high‐performance TENG in harvesting distributed ambient micro mechanical energy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To meet the great need for distributed and sustainable power sources, mechanical energy in the environment is widely used for electricity generation. Based on the coupling effect of triboelectrification and electrostatic induction, triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) as an innovative energy technology has advantages of collecting fluctuating amplitude and low-frequency mechanical energy. In this paper, a leaf-shaped TENG has been demonstrated to harvest multiple ambient mechanical energy. By the characterization with different mechanical energy sources, the leaf-shaped TENG has been proven as an effective tool to scavenge wind, vibration, and falling raindrop energy. Furthermore, based on numerous leaf-shaped TENGs, a leaf-shaped TENG tree has been developed, which can be used for continuous collection of environmental mechanical energy at large-scale. This paper has first exhibited a conformal structure for simultaneously harvesting various mechanical energy, which has bright potentials in environmental monitoring, Internet of things, and wireless sensor networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the coupling effect of contact electrification and electrostatic induction, the triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) as an emerging energy technology can effectively harvest mechanical energy from the ambient environment. However, due to its inherent property of large impedance, the TENG shows high voltage, low current and limited output power, which cannot satisfy the stable power supply requirements of conventional electronics. As the interface unit between the TENG and load devices, the power management circuit can perform significant functions of voltage and impedance conversion for efficient energy supply and storage. Here, a review of the recent progress of switching power management for TENGs is introduced. Firstly, the fundamentals of the TENG are briefly introduced. Secondly, according to the switch types, the existing power management methods are summarized and divided into four categories: travel switch, voltage trigger switch, transistor switch of discrete components and integrated circuit switch. The switch structure and power management principle of each type are reviewed in detail. Finally, the advantages and drawbacks of various switching power management circuits for TENGs are systematically summarized, and the challenges and development of further research are prospected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]