Lightweight Triboelectric Nanogenerator for Energy Harvesting and Sensing Tiny Mechanical Motion

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have shown exciting applications in mechanical energy harvesting and self‐powered sensing. Aiming at commercial applications, cost reduction and simplification of TENG structures are of great interest. In this work, a lightweight TENG based on the integration of polymer nanowires and a carbon sponge, which serves both as the substrate and an electrode, are reported. Because of the low density of the carbon sponge and the filmy nanowires, the device exhibits a total mass of less than 0.1 g for a volume of 12.5 cm 3 and it produces a short‐circuit current of 6 μA, open‐circuit voltage of 75 V, and a maximum output power of 0.28 W kg −1 under light finger tapping. The device can linearly measure the acceleration at a detection limit down to 0.25 m s −2 and for a detection range from 0.25 m s −2 to 10.0 m s −2 .