Advancements in Triboelectric Nanogenerators for Harvesting Environmental Energy

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have emerged as a promising technology for efficiently harvesting environmental energy, addressing the growing global demand for sustainable and renewable energy sources. This paper comprehensively reviews recent advancements in TENG technology, focusing on innovative designs, enhanced materials, and improved performance metrics. It systematically categorizes TENG designs based on energy sources, such as raindrop, wave, and wind, and compares their working principles, performance metrics, and hybrid integration strategies. Unlike prior reviews that mainly focus on material development, this work adopts a system‐level perspective linking material properties, device architecture, and power management. It also highlights the challenges and limitations currently faced by TENG technology, such as issues related to long‐term stability, environmental degradation of materials, and integration of power management systems. Then it examines the current development that addresses these issues in the context of harvesting environmental energy resources. Key developments include integrating a unified material selection framework based on four key parameters, surface charge density, friction coefficient, contact angle, and polarization, providing a consistent basis for performance comparison. Advances in hybrid systems, such as TENG‐EMG, TENG‐PV, and TENG‐PENG, are discussed, showing how improved design and power conditioning techniques enhance efficiency and stability. Finally, the paper identifies critical challenges, such as impedance matching, durability, and environmental degradation, and proposes future research pathways toward standardized testing and practical large‐scale deployment. Together, these insights establish a clear roadmap for advancing the reliability and applicability of TENGs in real‐world renewable energy systems.