Ali Matin Nazar, Xiaosheng Ji
Abstract Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have emerged as a transformative technology for enabling intelligent and sustainable civil infrastructure by simultaneously harvesting ambient mechanical energy and providing self-powered (SP) sensing capabilities. Civil systems such as bridges, tunnels, roadways, railways, and marine structures are continuously exposed to low-frequency, irregular, and widely distributed mechanical excitations arising from traffic, wind, waves, and structural vibrations, yet these energy resources remain largely underutilized by conventional electromagnetic technologies. This review provides a comprehensive and infrastructure-oriented synthesis of recent advances in TENGs, spanning working principles, material systems, environmental reliability, system-level energy harvesting strategies, and SP sensing applications relevant to real-world civil environments. Particular emphasis is placed on the interplay between triboelectric operating modes, material and interface engineering, environmental protection strategies, and advanced geometric designs that enable stable operation under humidity, temperature variation, mechanical fatigue, and corrosive conditions. Representative applications are systematically reviewed across ocean and wave energy harvesting, wind-driven systems, vehicle-induced roadway harvesting, bridge monitoring, tunnel and subsurface sensing, railway diagnostics, and marine environmental monitoring. In addition, emerging origami, kirigami, and bio-inspired architectures are discussed as powerful approaches to achieving multidirectional adaptability, motion amplification, and multifunctional performance. Finally, key challenges and future directions are outlined, including long-term field deployment, scalable manufacturing, hybrid energy systems, and integration with wireless communication, artificial intelligence, and digital twin frameworks. This review establishes a unified roadmap linking fundamental triboelectric design strategies to practical deployment pathways, positioning TENGs as a core enabling technology for next-generation SP, intelligent civil infrastructure systems.