Scientists find way to make energy from air using nearly any material
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/scientists-find-way-to-make-energy-from-air-using-nearly-any-material/ar-AA1bKlsG
"Nearly any material can be used to turn the energy in air humidity into electricity, scientists found in a discovery that could lead to continuously producing clean energy with little pollution."
"The research, published in a paper in Advanced Materials, builds on 2020 work that first showed energy could be pulled from the moisture in the air using material harvested from bacteria. The new study shows nearly any material can be used, like wood or silicon, as long as it can be smashed into small particles and remade with microscopic pores. But there are many questions about how to scale the product."
Generic Air-Gen Effect in Nanoporous Materials for Sustainable Energy Harvesting from Air Humidity
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202300748
"Air humidity is a vast, sustainable reservoir of energy that, unlike solar and wind, is continuously available. However, previously described technologies for harvesting energy from air humidity are either not continuous or require unique material synthesis or processing, which has stymied scalability and broad deployment. Here, a generic effect for continuous energy harvesting from air humidity is reported, which can be applied to a broad range of inorganic, organic, and biological materials. The common feature of these materials is that they are engineered with appropriate nanopores to allow air water to pass through and undergo dynamic adsorption–desorption exchange at the porous interface, resulting in surface charging. The top exposed interface experiences this dynamic interaction more than the bottom sealed interface in a thin-film device structure, yielding a spontaneous and sustained charging gradient for continuous electric output. Analyses of material properties and electric outputs lead to a “leaky capacitor” model that can describe how electricity is harvested and predict current behaviors consistent with experiments. Predictions from the model guide the fabrication of devices made from heterogeneous junctions of different materials to further expand the device category. The work opens a wide door for the broad exploration of sustainable electricity from air."
