High power generation in moisture via alkaline-treated MoS2coating sponge

Abstract

Hydroelectricity is an emerging novel electricity generation phenomenon that can generate electric power simply when nanostructured materials are in direct contact with omnipresent liquid water or moisture. In this work, after alkali treatment, a molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) sponge can produce a high-output voltage of about 430 mV and a remarkable output current of 62 μA under a relative humidity of 80%, which is over three times and 20 times as compared with that of pure MoS2 coating sponges, respectively, and it also achieves a continuous electric output over 1 h with good stability. The increasing number of movable cations after alkali treatment probably results in the improvement of power generation performance. Demonstrating the ability of the MoS2 coating sponges to function as a practical power source, the output voltage of the devices is further scaled up to 10 V by simple series connections, and capacitors charged to 5 V are able to power an electronic screen with single-chip computers.