Sustainable power generation for at least one month from ambient humidity using unique nanofluidic diode
Yong Zhang, Tingting Yang, Kedong Shang, Fengmei Guo, Yuanyuan Shang, Shulong Chang, Licong Cui, Xulei Lu, Zhongbao Jiang, Jian Zhou, Chunqiao Fu, Qi‐Chang He
Abstract
The continuous energy-harvesting in moisture environment is attractive for the development of clean energy source. Controlling the transport of ionized mobile charge in intelligent nanoporous membrane systems is a promising strategy to develop the moisture-enabled electric generator. However, existing designs still suffer from low output power density. Moreover, these devices can only produce short-term (mostly a few seconds or a few hours, rarely for a few days) voltage and current output in the ambient environment. Here, we show an ionic diode-type hybrid membrane capable of continuously generating energy in the ambient environment. The built-in electric field of the nanofluidic diode-type PN junction helps the selective ions separation and the steady-state one-way ion charge transfer. This directional ion migration is further converted to electron transportation at the surface of electrodes via oxidation-reduction reaction and charge adsorption, thus resulting in a continuous voltage and current with high energy conversion efficiency.