Achieving efficient power generation by designing bioinspired and multi-layered interfacial evaporator

Abstract

Water evaporation is a natural phase change phenomenon occurring any time and everywhere. Enormous efforts have been made to harvest energy from this ubiquitous process by leveraging on the interaction between water and materials with tailored structural, chemical and thermal properties. Here, we develop a multi-layered interfacial evaporation-driven nanogenerator (IENG) that further amplifies the interaction by introducing additional bionic light-trapping structure for efficient light to heat and electric generation on the top and middle of the device. Notable, we also rationally design the bottom layer for sufficient water transport and storage. We demonstrate the IENG performs a spectacular continuous power output as high as 11.8 μW cm−2 under optimal conditions, more than 6.8 times higher than the currently reported average value. We hope this work can provide a new bionic strategy using multiple natural energy sources for effective power generation.