Li Puying, Hu Yajie, Wang Haiyan, He Tiancheng, Cheng Huhu, Qu Liangti
State Key Laboratory of Flexible Electronics Technology, Ministry of Education, Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing, PR China.
Key Laboratory of Organic Optoelectronics & Molecular Engineering, Ministry of Education, Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing, PR China.
Nat Commun. 2025 Jul 17;16(1):6600. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-61913-9.
Harvesting energy from the surrounding environment holds great promise for meeting decentralized energy demands and facilitating the transition to a low-carbon economy. Ubiquitous moisture in the air offers a natural energy reservoir, but very little has yet been harnessed. Conventional moisture-electricity generators collect moisture energy through the directional migration of ions in the moisture-sorption functional materials induced by a moisture field. However, the unsatisfactory output performance severely limits their practical implementation. Herein, we develop an ion-electron conversion enhanced moisture energy harvester (i-eMEH) by creating an ion-enriched storage interface and concurrently inducing a faradic process through the dual redox couples in the functional layer/electrode interfaces. The i-eMEH reaches a record-high peak current of 9.2 mA cm and power density of 6.7 W m, ~60 times higher than those of reported moisture-electricity generators, and approaching the output level of perovskite solar cells and thermoelectric devices. The output rises to hundreds of milliamperes and tens of volts through the device enlargement and integration, thus efficiently charging the capacitor (4F) and commercial lithium battery. This moisture energy harvester manifests the great potential for miniaturized flexible electronics and presents a crucial step towards practical applications of moisture energy harvest.
从周围环境中获取能量对于满足分散式能源需求以及推动向低碳经济转型具有巨大潜力。空气中无处不在的水分提供了一个天然的能量库,但目前尚未得到充分利用。传统的湿气发电装置通过湿气场在湿气吸附功能材料中诱导离子的定向迁移来收集湿气能量。然而,其不尽人意的输出性能严重限制了它们的实际应用。在此,我们通过创建一个离子富集存储界面,并同时在功能层/电极界面通过双氧化还原对诱导法拉第过程,开发了一种离子-电子转换增强型湿气能量收集器(i-eMEH)。该i-eMEH达到了创纪录的9.2 mA cm的高峰值电流和6.7 W m的功率密度,比已报道的湿气发电装置高出约60倍,接近钙钛矿太阳能电池和热电器件的输出水平。通过扩大装置规模和集成,输出电流升至数百毫安,电压升至数十伏,从而有效地为电容器(4F)和商用锂电池充电。这种湿气能量收集器展现了在小型化柔性电子设备方面的巨大潜力,并朝着湿气能量收集的实际应用迈出了关键一步。