Environmental noise represents both a major environmental pollutant and an underutilized energy source. Conventional acoustic insulation materials primarily dissipate sound energy as heat without harvesting its potential energy. Here, a harvest-while-shield strategy is proposed based on multilayer electrospun piezoelectric-triboelectric fibrous membranes that simultaneously convert acoustic energy into electricity while attenuating sound transmission. The active layer consists of electrospun polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF)/polysulfone (PSF) hybrid fibers with an optimized weight ratio of 1:1 and a fiber diameter of 1.02 ± 0.15 μm, thereby enabling efficient piezoelectric-triboelectric coupling for acoustoelectric conversion. A single-layer acoustoelectric device (active area 12 cm2, thickness ≈50 μm) generates an open-circuit voltage of 269.2 V and a short-circuit current of 38.5 μA under acoustic excitation of 115 dB at 100 Hz, outperforming most reported single-component fibrous membranes. More importantly, multilayer assemblies (2−5 layers) enable simultaneous acoustic energy harvesting and noise shielding. A five-layer structure reduces the transmitted sound pressure level by 27.2 dB (from 110 to 82.8 dB at a frequency of 100 Hz) while delivering a maximum output power of 426.7 μW in series configuration (182.1 V, 9.9 μA) and 449.5 μW in parallel configuration (80.3 V, 18.1 μA) under 115 dB acoustic excitation. The membrane exhibits robust mechanical properties, with a tensile strength of 3.14 MPa and a Young’s modulus of 12.61 MPa, ensuring structural stability during acoustic vibration. This work establishes a multifunctional acoustic-material platform capable of simultaneous noise mitigation and acoustic energy harvesting, offering promising opportunities for environmental acoustic energy recycling, self-powered acoustic sensing, and smart noise-control infrastructure.
Qiu et al. (Mon,) studied this question.