Self-powered and self-sensing blue carbon ecosystems by hybrid fur triboelectric nanogenerators (F-TENG)

Seaweeds are critical in the blue carbon ecosystem; however, light limitation is a bottleneck for seaweed farming, especially in turbid waters. Utilizing triboelectric generators (TENG) to provide light for seaweeds is a promising solution for enhancing seaweed growth and increasing their carbon sequestration rate. Here, we develop the hybrid fur TENG (F-TENG) designed with the fur-brush TENG (FB-TENG) and fur-sphere TENG (FS-TENG) to enhance the growth of seaweeds and achieve the self-powered and self-sensing blue carbon ecosystems. The FB-TENG exhibits a multistage step signal response, enabling the determination of the fur brush's relative displacement, which, in turn, reflects the impact of marine flow on the device in the vertical direction. The FS-TENG is employed for marine flow energy harvesting in the horizontal direction to illuminate LED lights and stimulate seaweed growth. The FS-TENG with four power generation units achieves the peak current, transferred charge, and instantaneous output power values of 29.9 μA, 0.66 μC, and 89.3 mW, respectively. The seaweed cultivation experiments are conducted to demonstrate the significantly enhanced performance of the self-powered and self-sensing blue carbon ecosystems with respect to the growth of the juvenile seaweed by using the hybrid F-TENG as a self-powered light supply. A remarkable increase is observed in both the average net biomass accumulation and linear growth rate, reaching up to 10.83 ± 0.16% day−1 and 9.12 ± 0.68% day−1, respectively. Eventually, experiments are conducted in a circulating water tank to showcase the remarkable energy harvesting capabilities of the hybrid F-TENG. The reported hybrid F-TENG provides a promising solution for establishing self-powered and self-sensing blue carbon ecosystems.