Frontier Advances in Wind-Driven Triboelectric Nanogenerators for Realistic Wind Environments: Scenario-Oriented...

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) offer promising opportunities for distributed wind energy harvesting owing to their low-speed responsiveness, structural flexibility, and adaptability to non-stationary airflow. This review examines wind-driven TENGs from the perspective of realistic wind-field constraints, focusing on three representative scenarios: urban micro-winds, offshore wind-wave environments, and low-altitude complex flows. Scenario-specific advances in device architectures, materials and interfaces, environmental protection, power management, and system integration are systematically reviewed. Representative devices are further quantitatively compared in terms of wind-speed range, activation threshold, electrical output, power density, durability, and system-level energy delivery. Particular attention is given to inconsistent definitions of cut-in wind speed, output normalization, electrical loading, and validation conditions that limit cross-study comparison. Field-validation evidence is assessed from controlled laboratory tests to long-term field operation. Key challenges involving usable regulated energy, environmental reliability, lifetime prediction, array scaling, sustainability, and deployment economics are critically discussed. Finally, five grand challenges with actionable milestones are proposed to facilitate the transition of wind-driven TENGs from laboratory prototypes toward deployable distributed micro-energy systems.