Nanotechnology Generates Electricity from Thin Air

Engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have developed a technique for harvesting electricity from air humidity, called the “generic Air-gen effect,” using any material with nanopores less than 100 nanometers in diameter. This technique paves the way for a broad range of cost-effective, continuous electricity generation from various materials, overcoming limitations of condition-dependent renewables like solar and wind power. The Air-gen device would be capable of delivering kilowatt-level power for general electrical utility usage, and many thousands of them can be stacked on top of each other, efficiently scaling up the amount of energy without increasing the footprint of the device.