Smart Lanceolate Surface with Fast Fog-Digesting Performance for Triboelectric Energy Harvesting.

Abstract

Utilizing the ubiquitous fog in nature to create decentralized energy-harvesting devices, free from geographical and hydrological constraints, presents an opportunity to foster sustainable power generation. Extracting electrical energy from fog relies heavily on fog-digesting performance. Improving the efficiency of fogwater utilization remains a formidable challenge for existing fogwater energy-harvesting technologies. Inspired by the water-harvesting behavior of Tillandsia leaves, a smart lanceolate surface is developed to harvest triboelectric energy by rapidly digesting fog. Such a surface exhibits capabilities in fog management, encompassing precise fog capture, transportation, and critical droplet separation. Specifically, fog droplets condense at hydrophilic sites of acylated cellulose ester, subsequently migrating toward the rear under Laplace pressure, thereby producing energy as they traverse through the tail end. Such architecture yields a brief voltage restoration period (with an average of 9.36 s), can rush the capacitor to 11.59 V within 20 s, and achieves a water-digestion rate of up to 71.05 kg/m2 h. This biomimetic approach enhances the water-digestion efficacy of the atmospheric water energy apparatus and offers perspectives on mitigating deficiencies in power resources.