Maximizing Triboelectric Nanogenerators by Physics-Informed AI Inverse Design.

Triboelectric nanogenerators offer an environmentally friendly approach to harvesting energy from mechanical excitations. This capability has made them widely sought-after as an efficient, renewable, and sustainable energy source, with the potential to decrease reliance on traditional fossil fuels. However, developing triboelectric nanogenerators with specific output remains a challenge mainly due to the uncertainties associated with their complex designs for real-life applications. Artificial intelligence-enabled inverse design is a powerful tool to realize performance-oriented triboelectric nanogenerators. This is an emerging scientific direction that can address the concerns about the design and optimization of triboelectric nanogenerators leading to a next generation nanogenerator systems. This perspective paper aims at reviewing the principal analysis of triboelectricity, summarizing the current challenges of designing and optimizing triboelectric nanogenerators, and highlighting the physics-informed inverse design strategies to develop triboelectric nanogenerators. Strategic inverse design is particularly discussed in the contexts of expanding the four-mode analytical models by physics-informed artificial intelligence, discovering new conductive and dielectric materials, and optimizing contact interfaces. Various potential development levels of artificial intelligence-enhanced triboelectric nanogenerators are delineated. Finally, the potential of physics-informed artificial intelligence inverse design to propel triboelectric nanogenerators from prototypes to multifunctional intelligent systems for real-life applications is discussed.