Progress in nanogenerators for portable electronics

Besides targeting at the worldwide energy needs at a large scope, we have been developing an area of nanoenergy, aiming at using nanotechnology to harvest the energy required for sustainable, independent and maintenance free operation of micro/nano-systems and mobile/portable electronics. As first reported in 2006, various nanogenerators (NGs) have been demonstrated using piezoelectric, triboelectric and pyroelectric effects. By using the energy from our living environment, our goal is to make self-powered system. The self-powering approaches developed here are a new paradigm in nanotechnology and green energy for truly achieving sustainable self-sufficient micro/nano-systems, which are of critical importance for sensing, medical science, infrastructure/environmental monitoring, defense technology and personal electronics.