Triboelectric Nanogenerators for Food Quality Monitoring: Mechanisms and Applications.

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) are emerging self-powered sensing technologies that harvest low-frequency mechanical energy and convert it into electrical signals, demonstrating strong potential for real-time food quality and safety monitoring. This paper reviews the energy conversion mechanisms of TENG and recent advances in sensing within the food supply chain, with a focus on signal generation and response patterns in complex food systems. By exploiting the synergy between triboelectric generation and electrostatic induction, TENG produces electrical responses to external stimuli across food production, processing, transportation, and storage stages. Four TENG operating modes (contact-separation, lateral sliding, single-electrode, and independent friction layer) are summarized, along with their signal conversion mechanisms and interface control strategies from mechanical, environmental, and biological perspectives. Building on this foundation, recent advances in TENG applications is outlined, including logistics damage monitoring, smart packaging microenvironment sensing, liquid quality analysis, and pathogen detection. To address challenges such as limited selectivity, poor long-term stability, biocompatibility concerns, and complex integration, strategies are proposed, including interface functionalization, multimodal signal fusion, energy optimization, and machine learning-assisted analysis. This review provides theoretical and technical guidance for developing self-powered food safety monitoring systems and promotes TENG advancement toward higher sensitivity, intelligence, and integration.