Zhou Yi, Ding Tianpeng, Cheng Yin, Huang Yi, Wang Wu, Yang Jianmin, Xie Lin, Ho Ghim Wei, He Jiaqing
Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Thermoelectric Materials and Department of Physics, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China.
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117581, Singapore.
Natl Sci Rev. 2023 Jun 28;10(9):nwad186. doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwad186. eCollection 2023 Sep.
Weather-adaptive energy harvesting of omnipresent waste heat and rain droplets, though promising in the field of environmental energy sustainability, is still far from practice due to its low electrical output owing to dielectric structure irrationality and unscalability. Here we present atypical upcycling of ambient heat and raindrop energy via an all-in-one non-planar energy harvester, simultaneously increasing solar pyroelectricity and droplet-based triboelectricity by two-fold, in contrast to conventional counterparts. The delivered non-planar dielectric with high transmittance confines the solar irradiance onto a focal hotspot, offering transverse thermal field propagation towards boosted inhomogeneous polarization with a generated power density of 6.1 mW m at 0.2 sun. Moreover, the enlarged lateral surface area of curved architecture promotes droplet spreading/separation, thus travelling the electrostatic field towards increased triboelectricity. These enhanced pyroelectric and triboelectric outputs, upgraded with advanced manufacturing, demonstrate applicability in adaptive sustainable energy harvesting on sunny, cloudy, night, and rainy days. Our findings highlight a facile yet efficient strategy, not only for weather-adaptive environmental energy recovery but also in providing key insights for spatial thermal/electrostatic field manipulation in thermoelectrics and ferroelectrics.
尽管无处不在的废热和雨滴的天气自适应能量收集在环境能源可持续性领域前景广阔，但由于其介电结构不合理和不可扩展性导致电输出较低，仍远未付诸实践。在此，我们展示了一种通过一体化非平面能量收集器对环境热和雨滴能量进行的非典型升级利用，与传统同类产品相比，同时将太阳能热释电和基于水滴的摩擦电提高了两倍。所提供的具有高透射率的非平面电介质将太阳辐照限制在一个焦点热点上，提供横向热场传播，以增强不均匀极化，在0.2太阳光照下产生的功率密度为6.1 mW m。此外，弯曲结构增大的侧表面积促进了水滴的铺展/分离，从而使静电场朝着增加的摩擦电方向移动。这些增强的热释电和摩擦电输出，通过先进制造进行了升级，证明了其在晴天、阴天、夜晚和雨天的自适应可持续能量收集中的适用性。我们的发现突出了一种简便而有效的策略，不仅适用于天气自适应环境能量回收，还为热电学和铁电学中的空间热/静电场操纵提供了关键见解。
