EurekAlert February 12, 2020 A thermocell can convert environmental thermal energy to electric energy via thermal charging effect. However, the output voltage is low and depends on temperature. Researchers in Japan developed a thermocell containing a material that exhibited a temperature-induced phase transition of its crystal structure. Just above room temperature, the atoms in this solid material rearranged to form a different crystal structure. This phase transition resulted in an increase in output voltage from zero to around 120 mV, representing a considerable performance improvement over that of existing thermocells. They were able to finely tune the phase transition temperature […]
Tag Archives: energy harvesting
Scientists harvest energy from light using bio-inspired artificial cells
Nanowerk December 12, 2019 Researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory created cell-like hollow capsule structures through the spontaneous self-assembly of hybrid gold-silver nanorods held together by weak interactions. By wrapping these capsules’ walls with a light-sensitive membrane protein called bacteriorhodopsin, the researchers were able to unidirectionally channel protons from the interior of the artificial cells to the external environment. The key to the research came from coupling the group of artificial cells that were generating protons to a second, distinct group of artificial cells. These cells contain molecular motor machinery that uses the proton gradient to generate ATP which is […]
Novel thermoelectric nanoantenna design for use in solar energy harvesting
Nanowerk May 3, 2019 Researchers in Mexico fabricated and compared bimetallic Ni-Pt nanoantennas for a classic and evolutive dipole configuration. Observing the thermoelectric voltage dependence associated with classic and evolutive dipole configuration they found that the evolutive dipole nanoantennas (EDN) generate up to three times more voltage in contrast with the classic dipole nanoantenna (CDN). The evolutive configuration is 1.3 times more efficient than its classical counterpart. The results are corroborated by absorbance of these nanoantennas in the 20 to 36 THz range, where EDN is 40% more efficient than CDN and 30% in the range of 36.1 to 90 […]