Sustainable and flexible hydrovoltaic power generator for wearable sensing electronics

By Lianhui Li, Mingming Hao, Xianqing Yang, Fuqin Sun, Yuanyuan Bai, Haiyan Ding, Shuqi Wang, Ting Zhang. Nano Energy, 2020

158 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Along with the development of flexible electronics, there is a pressing demand for a suitable power supply featuring great flexibility, high mobility, good stability, and sustainability. Converting thermal energy into electricity during water evaporation process could be an attractive and promising opportunity. Here, a sustainable flexible hydrovoltaic power generator (HPG) driven by water evaporation with high performance in portability, flexibility, and long-term stable electricity generation was developed. Based on constructed functionalized nanochannels and the introduction of superabsorbent hydrogel as a water source, the HPG can take advantage of the spontaneous evaporation of water to continuously convert ambient heat into electricity. A sustainable short circuit current up to 63 μA and an optimized output power of 8.1 μW with a lifetime over 150 h were achieved at ambient conditions (20.4 °C, 55% RH). Moreover, the flexible hydrovoltaic nanogenerator can withstand a large range of bending deformation (up to 120°) without significant changes in power generation, which endows evaporation-induced HPGs with the ability to be applied as flexible portable power sources for wearable electronics.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Civil and Structural Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5974ad10683a26bf74144f62727f48894037051a