Zhong Lin Wang

Triboelectric nanogenerators offer an environmentally friendly approach to harvesting energy from mechanical excitations. This capability has made them widely sought‐after as an efficient, renewable, and sustainable energy source, with the potential to decrease reliance on traditional fossil fuels. However, developing triboelectric nanogenerators with specific output remains a challenge mainly due to the uncertainties associated with their complex designs for real‐life applications. Artificial intelligence‐enabled inverse design is a powerful tool to realize performance‐oriented triboelectric nanogenerators. This is an emerging scientific direction that can address the concerns about the design and optimization of triboelectric nanogenerators leading to a next generation nanogenerator systems. This perspective paper aims at reviewing the principal analysis of triboelectricity, summarizing the current challenges of …

The growing popularity of the Internet of Things has led to increases in the need for renewable energy and sensor systems. Therefore, triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have garnered significant attention as a novel form of energy production due to their lightweight nature, cost-effectiveness, high output, and versatility in terms of materials, low cost, and device configurations. TENGs have been studied for several uses, including self-powered sensing, biomedical, biomotion, healthcare monitoring, and robotic applications. The performance of TENG is drastically pretentious by the material because charge density (σ) is an inherent characteristic of the material. Metal-organic framework (MOF) materials possess robust charge-trapping capabilities, multifunctional structures, adjustable properties, and exceptional stability. These materials can be utilized or integrated as self-powered sensors of different kinds to …

Although natural evaporation absorbs substantial thermal energy from the ambient environment, efficiently utilizing this high‐entropy energy remains challenging. Here, the first water evaporation‐induced triboelectric nanogenerator is proposed. It only uses tap water to harvest low‐grade heat energy from the surroundings to convert it into electricity. The natural evaporation of the liquid can generate unintermittent electricity with an open‐circuit voltage of 382 V, a peak power of 0.42 mW, and three orders of magnitude enhancement up to 59.7 mJ mL−1 after consuming the same amount of tap water compared with the droplet‐based electricity generators. After which, the excellent power output lights 2 W LED and drives wearable electronic devices. This device also inhibits carbon steel materials' corrosion in solutions through the evaporation effect of the salt water on the spot. The present study provides novel …

Tactile perception systems as the medium between the ambient environment and robotics lie in the heart of modern artificial intelligence. By providing different electronic readouts under various circumstances, they can give easily captured information for post-processing. However, for applications of most reported tactile perception systems, external location assistances are still needed. Here, as inspired by the platypus’ sixth sense, we developed a new kind of tactile perception system based on triboelectric sensors with the additional function from quantum rods. This terminal can be used as a single-electrode mode triboelectric nanogenerator for both location detection and vertical force sensing with high sensitivity and fast response. Moreover, by adding CdSe/CdS quantum rods into an imprinted polydimethylsiloxane film, different lateral stretching levels can be perceived by a modified luminescence. Supported …

Controlling the motion of charge carriers in semiconductor materials is a fundamental strategy for achieving many functional devices, which is typically achieved by applying an external voltage source. Herein, using the electrostatic potential generated by a triboelectric material taken as a sliding “gate”, a functional current is generated across a semiconductor channel when the gate is moving in parallel to the dielectric surface. Systematic studies verify that the motion of the electrified “gate” induces the regional and dynamical doping of the semiconductor channel, thereby driving the carrier transport without applying an external voltage. This sliding-gated generator achieves mechanoelectric energy conversion based on the coupled triboelectrification effect and electrostatic field effect and is therefore termed as a field effect nanogenerator (FENG). It can output electrical currents with a waveform that follows well with …

Wearable and implantable triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) convert mechanical energy to electricity in the daily movements of the human body. Self‐generated dynamic electric field or displacement current of TENGs can operate from micrometers to centimeters, which offers a key technology for TENG‐based therapy systems for precision medicine on both tissues and cells. TENGs have low‐current and high‐voltage properties, which reduce damage to normal tissues, and kill rapidly dividing cancer cells. In this work, the dynamic electric field from TENG directly inhibits the cellular proliferation behavior of cancer cells. The work paves a new way for the self‐generated electric field of TENG for cancer therapy.

High-frequency supercapacitors (HF–SCs) are promising electric energy storage devices and alternating current line filters. However, severe self-discharge of HF–SCs causes significant energy loss and limits their applications. Current self-discharge suppression methods for supercapacitors typically lead to decreased rate performance and hence cannot be applied to HF–SCs directly. In this work, barium titanate (BTO) nanoparticles are employed as an electrolyte additive for HF–SCs to reduce self-discharge. By adding BTO nanoparticles into the electrolyte, both leakage current and decay of open circuit voltage of the devices are reduced without sacrificing the specific capacitance and high-frequency response. At a charging voltage of 2 V, the leakage current is reduced by 49 % (3.91 vs. 1.98 μA), while the time for the voltage to drop from 2.0 to 1.0 V is extended by 4.5 times (2300 vs. 10240 sec). When the HF …

Shelter forests (or shelter‐belts), while crucial for climate regulation, lack monitoring systems, e.g., Internet of Things (IoT) devices, but their abundant wind energy can potentially power these devices using the trees as mounting points. To harness wind energy, an omnidirectional fluid‐induced vibration triboelectric nanogenerator (OFIV‐TENG) has been developed. The device is installed on shelter forest trees to harvest wind energy from all directions, employing a fluid‐induced vibration (FIV) mechanism (fluid‐responding structure) that can capture and use wind energy, ranging from low wind speeds (vortex vibration) to high wind speeds (galloping). The rolling‐bead triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) can efficiently harvest energy while minimizing wear and tear. Additionally, the usage of double electrodes results in an effective surface charge density of 21.4 µC m−2, which is the highest among all reported …