Water Flow‐Induced Energy Harvesting Exploiting Stacked Graphene Oxide Membranes

Abstract

AbstractEnergy harvesting from water flow or evaporation is recently reported exploiting carbon‐based materials. The water‐carbon dualism is at the base of this phenomenon thanks to a charge redistribution at the liquid/solid interface. Many kinds of approaches and nanomaterials are proposed for this purpose. The main properties under investigation are the surface functionalization and the porosity of carbon‐based materials. In this context, the exploitation of a stacked graphene oxide (GO) membrane as layered nanochannels for water flow energy harvesting is proposed. At the best of this study's knowledge, GO membranes are never reported for this application. The flow is spontaneously induced by both capillarity and evaporation when part of the membrane is incubated in water. In this study, zero‐energy is externally provided allowing sustainable energy production without sub‐products. Different GO membranes are tested for this purpose reaching a maximum open circuit voltage of ≈450 mV and maximum current of ≈100 nA.