Boosting moisture induced electricity generation from graphene oxide through engineering oxygen-based functional groups
Renbo Zhu, Yanzhe Zhu, Fandi Chen, Robert Patterson, Yingze Zhou, Tao Wan, Long Hu, Tom Wu, Rakesh Joshi, Mengyao Li, Claudio Cazorla, Yuerui Lu, Zhaojun Han, Dewei Chu
Abstract
Harvesting energy from ubiquitous moisture is attracting growing interest for directly powering electronic devices. However, it is still challenging to fabricate high-performing moisture-electric generators (MEGs) with high and stable electric output. Herein, we report a simple strategy to modify the oxygen-based groups of graphene oxide using hydrochloric acid treatment, which boosts the electric output based on the device structure of graphene oxide/polyvinyl alcohol (GO/PVA) MEGs. The resulting MEG enables a stable voltage of 0.85 V and a current of 9.28 μA (92.8 μA∙cm-2), which are among the highest values reported so far. More excitingly, electric output gets further improved by simply assembling four MEG units in series or parallel. Moreover, the MEG shows great commercial potential for flexible and wearable applications. Driven by these advancements, the assembled MEGs can successfully power sensors and calculators. This work opens a new era of advance for a new energy conversion technology able to directly powering electronic devices.