Recent advances in high-performance triboelectric nanogenerators

The development of the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence has accompanied the evolution of energy demand and structure in the new era, and the power sources for billions of distributed electronics and sensors have aroused worldwide interest. As an alternative energy harvesting technology, triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have received remarkable attention and have shown attractive potential applications for use in micro/nano power sources, self-powered sensors, high-voltage power sources, and blue energy due to their advantages of small size, light weight, flexibility, low cost, and high efficiency at low frequency. In this review, we discuss high-performance TENGs from the perspectives of triboelectric charge density, output voltage, energy density, and corresponding quantification methods. Among these topics, the limitations, optimization methods and techniques, and potential directions to challenge these limits are comprehensively discussed and reviewed. Finally, we discuss the emerging challenges, strategies, and opportunities for research and development of high-performance TENGs.