Introducing TENGs into intelligent food packaging

Abstract

Background

Ensuring food safety and quality during production, transportation, storage, and retail stages is a critical global challenge. Traditional packaging systems are passive and fail to provide real-time monitoring capabilities, often leading to undetected spoilage, contamination, or tampering. Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs), capable of converting mechanical stimuli into electrical signals, offer an innovative route toward self-powered, intelligent food packaging systems with enhanced functionality, sustainability, and interactivity.

Scope and approach

This review provides a comprehensive and critical analysis of the integration of TENGs into smart food packaging, with an emphasis on sustainable material selection, device architecture, and practical sensing applications. Particular focus is placed on recent advances in TENG-based sensors for detecting gaseous spoilage markers, temperature and humidity fluctuations, microbial or chemical contamination, mechanical damage, and packaging tampering. Furthermore, system-level strategies for embedding TENGs into multilayer packaging structures are discussed, including their compatibility with biodegradable polymers and wireless modules.

Key findings and conclusions

TENG-enabled packaging systems offer remarkable potential for real-time, self-powered monitoring of food quality, safety, and traceability, without the need for external power sources. Additionally, their integration with IoT (Internet of Things) modules allows wireless alerts and tracking, making them suitable for supply-chain deployment. Despite these advantages, key challenges persist, including long-term durability in harsh environments, regulatory compliance, and cost-effective and scalable manufacturing. To bridge the gap between laboratory prototypes into commercial adoption, future efforts must prioritize material innovation, seamless system integration, and robust security features (e.g., tamper detection and authentication).