Recycling plastic waste into triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) presents a sustainable approach to energy harvesting, self-powered sensing, and environmental remediation. This study investigates the recycling of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe waste polymers into nanofibers (NFs) optimized for TENG applications. We focused on optimizing the morphology of recycled PVC polymer to NFs and enhancing their piezoelectric properties by incorporating ZnO nanoparticles (NPs). The optimized PVC/0.5 wt% ZnO NFs were tested with Nylon-6 NFs, and copper (Cu) electrodes. The Nylon-6 NFs exhibited a power density of 726.3 μW cm⁻²—1.13 times higher than Cu and maintained 90% stability after 172800 cycles, successfully powering various colored LEDs. Additionally, a 3D-designed device was developed to harvest energy from biomechanical movements such as finger tapping, hand tapping, and foot pressing, making it suitable for wearable energy harvesting, automatic switches, and invisible sensors in surveillance systems. This study demonstrates that recycling polymers for TENG devices can effectively address energy, sensor, and environmental challenges.

The rapid development of nanotechnology has significantly revolutionized wearable electronics and expanded their functionality. Through introducing innovative solutions for energy harvesting and autonomous sensing, this research presents a cost-effective strategy to enhance the performance of triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs). The TENG was fabricated from polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) and N, N′-poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) blend with a porous structure via a novel optimized quenching method. The developed approach results in a high β-phase content (85.7%) PVDF/3wt.%PMMA porous blend, known for its superior piezoelectric properties. PVDF/3wt.%PMMA modified porous TENG demonstrates remarkable electrical output, with a dielectric constant of 40 and an open-circuit voltage of approximately 600 V. The porous matrix notably increases durability, enduring over 36000 operational cycles without performance degradation. Moreover, practical applications were explored in this research, including powering LEDs and pacemakers with a maximum power output of 750 mW m⁻². Also, TENG served as a self-powered tactile sensor for robotic applications in various temperature conditions. The work highlights the potential of the PVDF/PMMA porous blend to utilize the next-generation self-powered sensors and power small electronic devices.