Scientists Working to Generate Electricity From Thin Air Make Breakthrough
fliptop writes:
Scientists making the "Air-gen" device have discovered that any material can be used to generate electricity from the air:
Scientists have invented a device that can continuously generate electricity from thin air, offering a glimpse of a possible sustainable energy source that can be made of almost any material and runs on the ambient humidity that surrounds all of us, reports a new study.
The novel "air generator," or Air-gen, is made from materials with holes that are under 100 nanometers in length, which is a scale thousand times smaller than a human hair. This design can pull electricity from water droplets in the air for much longer periods than previous concepts, the researchers report, suggesting that it could eventually provide a continuous and sustainable source of power. Researchers hope the technique could eventually help to fight climate change by serving as an alternative to fossil fuels.
[...] Now, researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, have developed an Air-gen device that yields electricity from contact with water droplets that pass through its porous material. In this way, the Air-gen technology creates "a spontaneous and sustained charging gradient for continuous electric output" that "opens a wide door for the broad exploration of sustainable electricity from ambient air," according to a study published on Wednesday in Advanced Materials.
[...] Indeed, the results revealed that practically any material could become an Air-gen device provided it was perforated with tiny holes measuring 100 nanometers or fewer. At this scale, the holes are big enough to allow water to pass through an upper chamber into a lower chamber, but are small enough that the droplets make contact with the material as they move down through the holes. As a consequence, a charge imbalance is created in the device because the water droplets increase the charge of the upper layer by soaking it as they move into the lower chamber.
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