Charging-free thermally regenerative electrochemical cycle for electricity generation from daytime solar heat and nighttime darkness

Abstract

The extensive exploration of energy conversion harvested from the environment into electricity is recently driven by the significant demand to power off-grid electronics, particularly Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensors. This highlight previews the latest advance of a charging-free thermally regenerative electrochemical cycle (TREC) for continuous electricity generation from solar heat and darkness with the aid of dual-mode thermal regulations. Such a spontaneous all-day electricity generation with high power and efficiency shows great potential for powering a wide range of distributed electronics for IoT and other applications.

Keywords

• redox flow cell
• thermally regenerative electrochemical cycle
• radiative cooling
• dual-mode thermal regulation
• low-grade heat harvesting
• internet-of-things