Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York 12180, United States.
Nano Lett. 2011 Aug 10;11(8):3123-7. doi: 10.1021/nl2011559. Epub 2011 Jul 14.
Water flow over carbon nanotubes has been shown to generate an induced voltage in the flow direction due to coupling of ions present in water with free charge carriers in the nanotubes. However, the induced voltages are typically of the order of a few millivolts, too small for significant power generation. Here we perform tests involving water flow with various molarities of hydrochloric acid (HCl) over few-layered graphene and report order of magnitude higher induced voltages for graphene as compared to nanotubes. The power generated by the flow of ∼0.6 M HCl solution at ∼0.01 m/sec was measured to be ∼85 nW for a ∼30 × 16 μm size graphene film, which equates to a power per unit area of ∼175 W/m(2). Molecular dynamics simulations indicate that the power generation is primarily caused by a net drift velocity of adsorbed Cl(-) ions on the continuous graphene film surface.
水在流经碳纳米管时，由于水中的离子与纳米管中的自由电荷载流子相互耦合，会在水流方向上产生感应电压。然而，感应电压通常只有几毫伏，对于产生显著的功率来说太小了。在这里，我们进行了涉及不同浓度盐酸（HCl）在少层石墨烯上的水流测试，并报告了与碳纳米管相比，石墨烯的感应电压高出几个数量级。我们测量了在约 0.01 m/sec 的流速下，约 0.6 M HCl 溶液的流量产生的功率约为 85 nW，对于约 30×16 μm 尺寸的石墨烯薄膜，这相当于单位面积的功率约为 175 W/m(2)。分子动力学模拟表明，发电主要是由连续石墨烯薄膜表面吸附的 Cl(-)离子的净漂移速度引起的。
