Nature Communications (Feb 2018)

Ultra-high thermal effusivity materials for resonant ambient thermal energy harvesting

  • Anton L. Cottrill,
  • Albert Tianxiang Liu,
  • Yuichiro Kunai,
  • Volodymyr B. Koman,
  • Amir Kaplan,
  • Sayalee G. Mahajan,
  • Pingwei Liu,
  • Aubrey R. Toland,
  • Michael S. Strano

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-03029-x
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 1
pp. 1 – 11

Abstract

Read online

Ambient environmental thermal fluctuations offer an abundant yet difficult to harvest renewable energy source, when compared to static thermal gradients. Here, by tuning the thermal effusivity of composite phase change materials, the authors are able to harvest energy from diurnal ambient temperature changes.