Optimizing Triboelectric Nanogenerators: Advances in Efficiency for Sustainable Energy Harvesting

As a part of STEM curriculum, we were required to tackle specific Egyptian grand challenges through a project with specified criteria during our academic year. We chose to address them by exploring triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs). TENGs are innovative type of generators that convert mechanical energy, which is friction, into electrical energy through triboelectric effect and electrostatic induction, a concept first demonstrated by Prof. Zhong Lin Wang's team in 2012 [1]. The basic idea behind this project was to use recycled materials, which have a high tendency to lose electrons easily, which naturally have a high tendency to easily lose electrons; this was done to fabricate TENGs into large-scale tiles that convert the kinetic energy of the people into electrical energy, specifically targeting an output of over 150 joules in a 5-minute frame.