Harvesting water energy using slippery surfaces

Inspired by natural pitcher plant surface that exhibits a peculiar slippery property, a novel slippery lubricant-impregnated porous surface (SLIPS) based triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), referred to as SLIPS-TENG, is developed to efficiently harvest energy from the most abundant, affordable resource, water. The SLIPS-TENG exhibits many remarkable advantages over conventional design including optical transparency, self-healing, self-cleaning, flexibility, and power generation stability, in a wide range of working environments.