Evaporation-Driven Charge Redistribution and Current Generation for Energy Harvesting Applications

摘要

The development of low power wireless sensor networks has generated interest in previously unsuitable energy harvesting methods as viable sources of power. We present a microfabricated synthetic leaf that can generate output voltages of 2 - 5 mu(V) for each motion of a gas-liquid interface due to the mechanical energy of evaporation-driven flow. The presented results provide a proof of concept for the use of evaporation-driven flow as a scalable mechanism of electrical energy conversion and energy harvesting applications.