Electrical Power Generation from Wet Textile Mediated by Spontaneous Nanoscale Evaporation

Abstract

Developing low-weight, frugal, and sustainable power sources for resource-limited settings appears to be a challenging proposition for the advancement of next-generation sensing devices and beyond. Here, we report the use of centimeter-sized simple wet fabric pieces for electrical power generation by deploying the interplay of a spontaneously induced ionic motion across fabric nanopores due to capillary action and simultaneous water evaporation by drawing thermal energy from the ambient. Unlike other reported devices with similar functionalities, our arrangement does not necessitate any input mechanical energy or complex topographical structures to be embedded in the substrate. A single device is capable of generating a sustainable open circuit potential up to ∼700 mV, which is further scaled up to ∼12 V with small-scale multiplexing (i.e., deploying around 40 numbers of fabric channels simultaneously). The device is able to charge a commercial supercapacitor of ∼0.1 F which can power a white light-emitting diode for more than 1 h. This suffices in establishing an inherent capability of functionalizing self-powered electronic devices and also to be potentially harnessed for enhanced power generation with feasible up-scaling.