Nature-inspired PDMS cumulonimbus micro-energy-harvesting cloud
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Nature‑inspired PDMS cumulonimbus micro‑energy‑harvesting cloud Sreenidhi Prabha Rajeev1 · V. Nimmy John2 · S. Sabarinath3 · A. Ashfak3 · Cherumanil Karimuthil Subash4 · Soney Varghese4 Received: 16 July 2020 / Accepted: 7 September 2020 © King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology 2020
Abstract Here in this work, nanoenergy-generating films mimicked from cumulonimbus cloud were prepared using deionised water (DI) in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). Various characterisation methods have been adopted to verify the content of water as well as the resemblance of the morphological structure of the water-entrapped polymer films with clouds which include scanning electron microscopy and optical reflectance imaging techniques. The water content entrapment in the polymer is verified using the ATR-IR spectroscopy by finding absorbance peaks at 3266 and 1634 cm −1. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) sheets with a copper coating (Cu-PET) were used as contact electrodes, and the device was fabricated by the simple sandwiching process. Dielectric studies of the device under an applied electric field were used to illustrate the presence of interfacial hopping as well as orientational polarisation in the device. The device fabricated shows an enhancement of 218% and 562% with an increase in water content from 4:1 to 1:1 and a decrease of 26% and 36.5% with a further increase in water for the generated voltage and current measured, respectively. The optimum concentration of polymer to water is selected as 1:1 and the decrease in current and voltage may be due to the condensation of water molecules leading to fewer contact sites between the water and polymer molecules. The devices showed an increment of voltage and current of 171.1 V and 29.16 nA, respectively, with an increase in the force of 1–5 N by using an automated input system. The device was tested under various mechanical inputs, and the generated energy used as sensors in the knock sensor, home doorbell system and seabed vibration detector and as a secondary powering source for charging mobile phones and lighting LED. Keywords Polydimethyl siloxane PDMS · Cloud · Lightning · Energy harvesting · Mobile charging
Introduction
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13204-020-01556-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Sreenidhi Prabha Rajeev [email protected] 1
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Amrita School of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amritapuri Campus, Kollam, Kerala, India
2
Humanities and Science Department, Vedavyasa Institute of Technology, Karadaparamba, Malappuram, Kerala 673632, India
3
Department of Mechanical Engineering, TKM College of Engineering, Kollam, Kerala, India
4
Nanomaterials and Device Research Laboratory, School of Materials Science and Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Calicut, Kerala 673601, India
Lightning is one of the mysteries that has fascinated scie
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