Submerged and completely open solid–liquid triboelectric nanogenerator for water wave energy harvesting

Triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is an emerging wave energy harvesting technology with excellent potential. However, due to issues with sealing, anchoring, and difficult deployment over large areas, TENG still cannot achieve large-scale wave energy capture. Here, a submerged and completely open solid–liquid TENG (SOSL-TENG) is developed for ocean wave energy harvesting. The SOSL-TENG is adapted to various water environments. Due to its simple structure, it is easy to deploy into various marine engineering facilities in service. Importantly, this not only solves the problem of difficult construction of TENG networks at present, but also effectively utilizes high-quality wave energy resources. The working mechanism and output performance of the SOSL-TENG are systematically investigated. With optimal triggering conditions, the transferred charge (Q_tr) and short-circuit current (I_sc) of SOSL-TENG are 2.58 μC and 85.9 μA, respectively. The wave tank experiment is taken for fully demonstrating the superiority of the SOSL-TENG network in large-scale collection and conversion of wave energy. Due to the excellent output performance, TENG can harvest wave energy to provide power for various commercial electronic devices such as LED beads, hygrothermograph, and warning lights. Importantly, the SOSL-TENG networks realizes self-powered for electrochemical systems, which provides a direction for energy cleanliness in industrial systems. This work provides a prospective strategy for large-scale deployment of TENG applications, especially for harvesting wave energy in spray splash zones or at the surface of the water.