Advances in real-time water quality monitoring using triboelectric nanosensors

Abstract

Recent developments in Triboelectric Nanosensors (TENS) have significantly advanced real-time water quality monitoring. The microfluidic platform integration of TENS improves fluid dynamics control and enhances the detection efficiency and specificity. Advances in materials science, including functionalized materials and the use of nanostructured polymers, have optimized charge generation, energy conversion, and device durability, facilitating timely responses to contamination events, and ensuring reliable performance under various environmental conditions. This review highlights the principles, advancements, and applications of TENS, offering insights into future directions for enhancing their integration into portable environmental monitoring systems. In agriculture, IoT-enabled TENS systems monitor runoff, optimizing irrigation and reducing environmental impacts. Urban applications include detecting pollutants in water distribution systems, with the integration of multiparametric sensors for real-time monitoring. Specific designs, such as mercury detection TENS, sensitivity-enhancing solid–liquid contact electrification, and dual-purpose heavy metal systems, highlight innovations in material engineering. Robotic integration enables automated analyte detection and low-cost solutions for resource-limited settings, while healthcare applications like bacterial and viral biosensors and real-time evaluation of cardiac and anti-tumor drugs exhibit precision diagnostics. The remaining challenges include fluctuating energy outputs that call for sophisticated power management strategies, difficulty of scaling TENS for industrial applications, signal processing problems such as weak and noisy outputs, and material durability under dynamic stresses due to which sophisticated flexible substrates and surface engineering are required to improve longevity.