Electricity Harvested from Ambient Heat across Silicon Surface

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that silicon surfaces can generate electricity from ambient thermal motion of ions at room temperature, challenging traditional thermodynamic principles and suggesting new avenues for renewable energy harvesting.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method of electricity generation from ambient heat using silicon surfaces, with experimental validation and a proposed dynamic drag mechanism.

Findings

Maximum open-circuit voltage of 0.40 V

Output current over 11 μA with 25 kΩ load

Power density of 8.6 μW/cm²

Abstract

We report that electricity can be generated from limitless thermal motion of ions by two dimensional (2D) surface of silicon wafer at room temperature. A typical silicon device, on which asymmetric electrodes with Au and Ag thin films were fabricated, can generate a typical open-circuit voltage up to 0.40 V in 5 M CuCl2 solution and an output current over 11 {\mu}A when a 25 k{\Omega} resistor was loaded into the circuit. Positive correlation between the output current and the temperature, as well as the concentration, was observed. The maximum output current and power density are 17 {\mu}A and 8.6 {\mu}W/cm2, respectively. The possibility of chemical reaction was excluded by four groups of control experiments. A possible dynamic drag mechanism was proposed to explain the experimental results. This finding further demonstrates that ambient heat in the environment can be harvested by 2D semiconductor surfaces or low dimensional materials and would contribute significantly to the research of renewable energy. However, this finding does not agree with the second law of thermal dynamatics. A lot of future work will be needed to study the mechanism behind this phenomenon.