Harvesting Water-Evaporation-Induced Electricity Based on Liquid–Solid Triboelectric Nanogenerator

Abstract

Harvesting energy from natural water evaporation has been proposed as a promising alternative to supply power for self-powered and low-power devices and systems, owing to its spontaneous, ubiquitous, and sustainability. Herein, an approach is presented for harvesting water-evaporation-induced electricity based on liquid–solid triboelectric nanogenerators (LS-TENGs), which has various advantages of easy preparation, substrate needless, and robustness. This developed harvester with porous Al2O3 ceramic sheet can generate a continuous and stable direct current of ≈0.3 µA and voltage of ≈0.7 V by optimizing the sheet physical dimensions and ambient parameters such as relative humidity, temperature, wind velocity, and ion concentration. The output power also can be improved significantly by series or parallel connection the harvesters, which has superior electrical compatibility and environmental suitability. The development of the water-evaporation-induced electricity harvesting shows many application prospects including power supply for digital calculator and charging capacitor. This research provides an in-depth experimental study on water-evaporation-induced electricity harvesting based on LS-TENGs and an efficient approach to supply electricity for low-power devices.