LAUSR

It is an ideal way to use triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) to capture energy from the environment for the degradation of organic contaminants in water as a zero-carbon pathway. However, there is an urgent need to further develop TENGs with a simple structure and high output power. Herein, a novel TENG with a vortex-like flexible self-recovery blades of inner stator (denoted as VFR-TENG) is designed and manufactured with the assistance of a fused deposition modeling 3D printing technology. With the rotation of the outer rotor, a facile rotating contact-separation mode is achieved by the alternating arrangement of the flexible self-recovery blades. The contact tightness of the friction layer, a key factor for the transfer of charge density, can be easily adjusted by the thickness and arrangement style of the flexible self-recovery blades. The regulation of material elasticity and rotational frequency on the output characteristics is further investigated based on the special flexible structure. The VFR-TENG exhibits an instantaneous short-circuit current of 350 μA, an open-circuit voltage of 650 V, a transferred charge of 1.1 μC, and an optimum output power density of 4.4 W·m-2. This high-performance VFR-TENG is used for electrochemical degradation systems, which achieves excellent degradation efficiencies of 88.9, 91.7, and 94.1% for methylene blue, methyl orange, and malachite green within 150 min, respectively. This work provides a new idea for the design of flexible self-recovery contact-separation TENGs, which is of great inspiration for the exploitation of TENGs with both the high peak current and high-frequency characteristics for efficient water treatment.