Dew can also generate electricity!

Last year, the MIT Institute of Technology discovered that when water in the air condenses and spontaneously jumps away from superhydrophobic surfaces (superhydrophobic surfaces: surfaces that are extremely difficult to wet with water, such as lotus leaves), Charge. Today, they finally proved that this discovery can be applied to power generation in power equipment.
Nenad Miljkovicc, a postdoctoral fellow in mechanical engineering, and Evelyn Wang, associate professor, and two other researchers published articles on the above-mentioned research in Applied Physics Letters. Research shows that as long as the air has a certain humidity, it can use this power generation system to charge its own mobile phone or other electronic products. And the system is also very simple, requiring only a layer of specially treated metal plates to allow dew to jump back and forth and generate electricity. Although copper plates are currently used for testing, they also stated that other conductive metals can be used, including inexpensive aluminum.
In the initial tests, only 15 picowatts of electricity was produced per square centimeter of metal plate, but Dr. Miljkovic said that it can soon reach the level of 1 microwatt per square centimeter, so that it can generate electricity with other environmental energy sources such as waste heat. The power generated by vibration power generation is equivalent, and it is sufficient to charge small-sized power equipment in remote areas.
According to Dr. Miljkovic's estimate of 1 microwatt per cubic centimeter of electricity, a 50-centimeter-long cube -- roughly the size of a typical camping cooler -- could be used to charge a mobile phone within 12 hours. Electricity. Although charging is slow, there are limited ways to generate electricity in remote areas.
Duan Chuanhua, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Boston University, believes that this study has proposed a new idea for charging small electronic devices with lower power. “Acquiring energy from the condensing process is definitely a new idea. Condensation is mainly used in thermal management. The research on the condensation of superhydrophobic surfaces has focused on self-cleaning and anti-icing applications. This is the first time it has been collected. Energy is related," he added.