Harvesting
energy from the ambient environment provides great promise
in the applications of micro/nanodevices and self-powered systems.
Herein, we report a novel energy-scavenging method where an ionic
solution infiltrating into a three-dimensional graphene (3DG) membrane
can spontaneously generate electricity under ambient conditions. A
constructed 3DG nanogenerator (3DGNG) with an effective size of 0.5
× 2 cm can produce a continuous voltage of ∼0.28 V and
a remarkable output current of ∼62 μA. The voltage is
higher than those generated from the interaction between water and
carbon nanomaterials in previous research typically in the range of
microvolts to millivolts. Moreover, we demonstrate the potential application
of the 3DGNG by illuminating a liquid crystal display (LCD) directly
with 10 3DGNGs in series. These results present a novel avenue for
energy harvesting and show bright potential applications in small
devices and self-powered systems.
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