Serious climate changes and energy-related environmental
problems
are currently critical issues in the world. In order to reduce carbon
emissions and save our environment, renewable energy harvesting technologies
will serve as a key solution in the near future. Among them, triboelectric
nanogenerators (TENGs), which is one of the most promising mechanical
energy harvesters by means of contact electrification phenomenon,
are explosively developing due to abundant wasting mechanical energy
sources and a number of superior advantages in a wide availability
and selection of materials, relatively simple device configurations,
and low-cost processing. Significant experimental and theoretical
efforts have been achieved toward understanding fundamental behaviors
and a wide range of demonstrations since its report in 2012. As a
result, considerable technological advancement has been exhibited
and it advances the timeline of achievement in the proposed roadmap.
Now, the technology has reached the stage of prototype development
with verification of performance beyond the lab scale environment
toward its commercialization. In this review, distinguished authors
in the world worked together to summarize the state of the art in
theory, materials, devices, systems, circuits, and applications in
TENG fields. The great research achievements of researchers in this
field around the world over the past decade are expected to play a
major role in coming to fruition of unexpectedly accelerated technological
advances over the next decade.