Ultrahigh-Energy-Density Sorption Thermal Battery Enabled by Graphene Aerogel-Based Composite Sorbents for Thermal Energy Harvesting from Air

Membrane-free battery for harvesting low-grade thermal energy.

Efficient and low-cost systems are desired to harvest the tremendous amount of energy stored in low-grade heat sources (<100 °C). An attractive approach is the thermally regenerative electrochemical cycle (TREC), which uses the dependence of electrode potential on temperature to construct a thermodynamic cycle for direct heat-to-electricity conversion. By varying the temperature, an electrochem...

Thermal Energy Harvesting Using Fluorinated Terpolymers

“Solar and Thermal Energy Harvesting Textile Composites

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Graphene-based photovoltaic cells for near-field thermal energy conversion

Thermophotovoltaic devices are energy-conversion systems generating an electric current from the thermal photons radiated by a hot body. While their efficiency is limited in far field by the Schockley-Queisser limit, in near field the heat flux transferred to a photovoltaic cell can be largely enhanced because of the contribution of evanescent photons, in particular for a source supporting a su...

Graphene/elastomer composite-based photo-thermal nanopositioners

The addition of nanomaterials to polymers can result not only in significant material property improvements, but also assist in creating entirely new composite functionalities. By dispersing graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) within a polydimethylsiloxane matrix, we show that efficient light absorption by GNPs and subsequent energy transduction to the polymeric chains can be used to controllably pro...