Structural Superlubricity and Triboelectric Nanogenerators in MEMS: Opportunities, Challenges, and Future Directions

Structural superlubricity (SSL) and triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have emerged as promising solutions to the long-standing challenges of friction, wear, and power supply in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). This review provides a comprehensive overview of recent advances in these two technologies, with a particular emphasis on their integration within MEMS platforms. This study first examines the fundamental mechanisms, material systems, and fabrication strategies underlying SSL, followed by a detailed discussion of its application in ultra-low-friction components such as microswitches, sliding interfaces, microvalves, and microactuators. This study then summarizes the operating principles and structural modes of TENGs, highlighting their capabilities for self-powered sensing and energy harvesting in scenarios including vibration detection, microfluidic monitoring, tactile interaction, and autonomous micro-energy systems. The synergistic integration of SSL and TENGs is explored as a pathway toward realizing highly reliable, wear-free, and energy-autonomous intelligent microsystems. Finally, this study identifies key technological bottlenecks and outlines future research directions aimed at enabling scalable, long-term operation of next-generation MEMS devices.