Eco-energy Smart Card”: A human-interactive all paper based, mechanical energy harvester

Abstract

Nowadays, it is imperative that modern society finds sustainable ways to harvest energy. This means society is forced to look to new ways to generate and store energy, while reducing, simultaneously, the stress on raw materials demand and the amount of waste generated. Our research tackles these two points by making close to zero e-waste clean energy harvesting devices. The core idea behind it is based on the mechano-responsive charge-transfer mechanism and energy-transfer process in π-conjugated polymer at the organic-metal interface layer. A localized forced deformation of the interface has been applied against the polymer surface, allowing charge transfer between material interfaces. The experimental results demonstrated that during contacting force, the conjugated polymer film shows electrical output through the charge transfer mechanism within metal/polymer interfaces. Flexible and low-cost energy harvesting devices built have an active layer constituted by a PANi/cellulose composite which was tapped together to a charge collector layer, that was made from a paper based metallic electrode. These devices have a total maximum power density and maximum current density of 1.75 Wm-2 and 33.5 mA m-2 , respectively. Towards the practical applicability, these devices are able to light up to 40 blue LEDs as well as a commercial humidity sensor

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