Improved osmotic energy conversion in heterogeneous membrane boosted by three-dimensional hydrogel interface

Abstract

The emerging heterogeneous membranes show unprecedented superiority in harvesting the osmotic energy between ionic solutions of different salinity. However, the power densities are limited by the low interfacial transport efficiency caused by a mismatch of pore alignment and insufficient coupling between channels of different dimensions. Here we demonstrate the use of three-dimensional (3D) gel interface to achieve high-performance osmotic energy conversion through hybridizing polyelectrolyte hydrogel and aramid nanofiber membrane. The ionic diode effect of the heterogeneous membrane facilitates one-way ion diffusion, and the gel layer provides a charged 3D transport network, greatly enhancing the interfacial transport efficiency. When used for harvesting the osmotic energy from the mixing of sea and river water, the heterogeneous membrane outperforms the state-of-the-art membranes, to the best of our knowledge, with power densities of 5.06 W m−2. The diversity of the polyelectrolyte and gel makes our strategy a potentially universal approach for osmotic energy conversion.