Researchers at the University of Massachusetts have proven that it is possible to produce electricity using air. However, this discovery is really just a huge accident.
Researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst claim to have found a way to generate electricity from the humidity in the air around us. Scientists have succeeded in generating a weak but continuous electrical current using a device as small as a thumbnail, which is one-fifth the width of a human hair.
While solar energy now exceeds 30% efficiency, scientists around the world are working on new renewable energies, but it is not every day that they manage to discover a new one. However, it turns out that this discovery is actually the result of an accident in a laboratory.
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The discovery was made by accident
” To be frank, it was an accident ”, explains the lead author of the study, Professor Jun Yao, to the Guardian. ” We actually wanted to make a simple air humidity sensor, but for some reason the student working on it forgot to plug in the power. The UMass Amherst team was surprised to find that the device, made up of an array of microscopic tubes, or nanowires, still produced an electrical signal “.
According to him, ” each nanowire was less than one-thousandth the diameter of a human hair, wide enough for an airborne water molecule to penetrate, but so narrow that it collided inside the tube. The team found that each shock imparted a small charge to the material, and as the frequency of the shocks increased, one end of the tube charged differently than the other. “. ” It’s like a battery “says Yao.
The research team conducted a new study in which they abandoned nanowires to use materials with millions of tiny holes, or nanopores. The result is a device the size of a thumbnail that can generate about one microwatt. It is enough for light up a pixel on a large LED screen.
We are therefore still a long way from being able to exploit this technology to power our current devices, but researchers are on the right track to find a new source of renewable energy.
