A droplet-based electricity generator incorporating Kelvin water dropper with ultrahigh instantaneous power density

Abstract

Harvesting renewable water energy in various formats such as raindrops, waves, and evaporation is one of the key strategies for achieving global carbon neutrality. The recent decade has witnessed rapid advancement of the droplet-based electricity generator (DEG) with a continuous leap in the instantaneous output power density from 50 W/m² to several kW/m². Despite this, further pushing the upper limit of the output performance of DEG is still constrained by low surface charge density and long precharging time. Here, we report a DEG incorporating the Kelvin water dropper (K-DEG) that can generate an ultrahigh instantaneous power density of 10⁵ W/m² upon one droplet impinging. In this design, the Kelvin water dropper continuously replenishes the high density of surface charges on DEG, while DEG fully releases these surface charges into electric output. K-DEG with such a high output can directly light five 6-W commercial lamps and even charge a cellphone by using falling droplets.