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The anti‐glare panels along highways can block the dazzling lights of opposing vehicles at night, playing an important role in the highway safety. Inspired by the highway anti‐glare panels, wind energy harvesting triboelectric nanogenerator (AG‐TENG) arrays to properly capture energy from highway moving vehicles is developed. A single AG‐TENG installation module can achieve a high power density of 0.2 Wm−2 at a wind speed of 3 m s−1. This wind speed is too low to drive conventional wind energy harvesting equipment. The performance of the AG‐TENG shows no degradation after 80 h of continuous operation (1 440 000 times). Thus, with the rational consideration and features, the system can generate enough power to drive internet of things (IoT) devices and environmental sensors, as well as offer wireless alarming and radio frequency identification vehicle monitoring. This study provides a promising strategy to properly harvest wind energy on highways using existing infrastructures under the condition of even no natural wind, showing broad application prospects in distributed environmental monitoring, intelligent highways, and the IoT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) developed by Z. L. Wang's team to harvest random mechanical energy is a promising new energy source for distributed sensing systems in the new era of the internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) for a smart world. TENG has many advantages that make it suitable for a wide range of applications, including energy harvesting, environmental protection, wearable electronics, robotics, and self-powered sensors. Sensing as an important part of TENG applications is gradually expanding, with the in-depth study of TENG sensing in its working principle, material selection, processing technology, system integration, surface treatment, and back-end algorithms by researchers. In industry and academia, fluid dynamics sensing for liquid and air is urgently needed but lacking. In particular, local fluid sensing is difficult and limited to traditional sensors. Fortunately, with advantages for ordinary TENGs and TENGs as fluid dynamics sensors, fluid dynamics sensing can be better realized. Therefore, the paper summarizes the up-to-date work on TENGs as fluid dynamics sensors, discusses the advantages of TENGs as fluid dynamics sensors in-depth, and, most importantly, aims to explore possible new key areas to help guide the future direction of TENG in fluid dynamics sensing by addressing the key challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), as an emerging technology for distributed energy harvesting, provides a promising energy solution for self‐powered environmental monitoring. However, the abrasion of triboelectric materials lowers the output performance of TENGs, severely limiting their practical applications. Herein, a novel travel‐controlled approach, by combining a gear train and cam switch, is proposed to reduce the mechanical wear. The automatic switching between the contact and non‐contact modes can be achieved in a tunable frequency, showing excellent electrical stability by maintaining 90% of electric outputs after continuous operation for 80 h (1 920 000 cycles). Meanwhile, based on the structural optimization, the power density per unit wind speed of the travel‐controlled TENG (TC‐TENG) is doubled as compared with that of previous related works. Moreover, by integrating the triboelectric‐electromagnetic hybrid device with an energy management circuit, a self‐powered close‐looped environmental monitoring and alarming system are demonstrated. Under breezy conditions (below 3 m s−1), the system can detect the environmental information continuously and steadily, and transmit it wirelessly to a mobile device. This work renders a novel approach to reducing the wear in TENGs toward self‐powered wireless sensing systems, showing broad application prospects in distributed unmanned environmental monitoring, smart farming, and Internet of Things. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] To facilitate the transition of triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG) from early stages to large-scale real-world applications, urgent mass production is imperative, necessitating standardized manufacturing processes. In this study, a novel "pause-and-insert" and "print-in-place" 3D printing approach has been devised, employing widely available fused deposition modeling (FDM) printers along with conductive (as electrodes) and nonconductive (for casing and support) filaments to make encapsulate microbeads triboelectric nanogenerator (MB-TENG). This innovation results in a fully enclosed freestanding-mode TENG pack, seamlessly integrated with a lightweight wind-induced oscillator featuring tuning systems, thus enabling efficient, safe, and noiseless omnidirectional wind energy harvesting. Through adept design and manufacturing techniques, systematic inner-structure optimization has been achieved, yielding superior output and industrialization levels compared to similar efforts. MB-TENG's surface charge density is as high as 19.9 µC/m2. The average power density is 13.8 W/m3. Moreover, the elimination of postprocessing significantly streamlines standard manufacturing, enhancing the prospects for device commercialization. Beyond its wind energy application, the versatile energy packs can serve as both ocean wave and human motion harvesters within network configurations, capable of powering a massive real-time monitoring sensor array. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-powered flexible sensors play an increasingly important role in wearable and even implantable electronic devices. Silk protein is an ideal material for flexible sensors because of its terrific biocompatibility and controllable degradation rate. Here, we overcome the problem of mechanical flexibility and poor electrical conductivity of proteins, and develop a highly transparent, biocompatible, full-degradable and flexible triboelectric nanogenerator (Bio-TENG) for energy harvesting and wireless sensing. First, the mechanical flexibility of the silk protein film is greatly enhanced by the mesoscopic functionalization of regenerated silk fibroin (RSF) via adding glycerol and polyurethane (PU). Second, hollow silver nanofibers are constructed on the silk film to form an air-permeable, stretchable, biocompatible and degradable thin layer and utilized as friction electrode. The obtained Bio-TENG demonstrates high transparency (83% by one Ag gird layer), stretchability (Ɛ = 520%) and an instantaneous peak power density of 0.8 W m−2 that can drive wearable electronics. Besides, the Bio-TENG can work as artificial electronic skin for touch/pressure perception, and also for wirelessly controlling Internet of Things as a switch. • Conductive and ultrastretchable (520%) silk protein film was prepared. • Hollow silver nanofibers were constructed on silk film to enhance conductivity. • Bio-TENG was air permeable, biocompatible, stretchable and degradable. • Bio-TENG was applied for energy harvesting and wirelessly controlling Internet of Things. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]