Jumping-Droplet Electrostatic Energy Harvesting
Name
Wang_Jumping-droplet electrostatic.pdf
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4.93 MB
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Checksum (MD5)
05e55811d61243bff060ecb92d583806
Author(s)
Miljkovic, Nenad
Preston, Daniel John
Enright, Ryan
Wang, Evelyn N.
Date Issued
June 19, 2014
Journal
Applied Physics Letters
Publisher
American Institute of Physics
Citation
Miljkovic, Nenad, Daniel J. Preston, Ryan Enright, and Evelyn N. Wang. "Jumping-Droplet Electrostatic Energy Harvesting." Applied Physics Letters 105, 013111 (2014).
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Micro- and nanoscale wetting phenomena has been an active area of research due to its potential for improving engineered system performance involving phase change. With the recent advancements in micro/nanofabrication techniques, structured surfaces can now be designed to allow condensing coalesced droplets to spontaneously jump off the surface due to the conversion of excess surface energy into kinetic energy. In addition to being removed at micrometric length scales (~10 μm), jumping water droplets also attain a positive electrostatic charge (~10-100 fC) from the hydrophobic coating/condensate interaction. In this work, we take advantage of this droplet charging to demonstrate jumping-droplet electrostatic energy harvesting. The charged droplets jump between superhydrophobic copper oxide and hydrophilic copper surfaces to create an electrostatic potential and generate power during formation of atmospheric dew. We demonstrated power densities of ~15 pW/cm[superscript 2], which, in the near term, can be improved to ~1 μW/cm[superscript 2]. This work demonstrates a surface engineered platform that promises to be low cost and scalable for atmospheric energy harvesting and electric power generation.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4886798
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4886798
