Issue 31, 2019

A sensitized thermal cell recovered using heat

Abstract

You can find thermal energy everywhere in the world, including geothermal energy. Here we report an amazing battery that could supply power semi-permanently by simply burying the cell in a heat source and turning the switch on and off. We examined the discharge termination process of a sensitized thermal cell (STC), a new thermal energy conversion system for generating electrical power from heat previously reported by the authors. To observe this termination process, we constructed a new STC system using a narrow-bandgap semiconductor, germanium (Ge), and surprisingly found that the battery characteristics were restored after discharging by placing or burying the battery in a heat source. This discovery should bring us closer to solving global energy problems.

Graphical abstract: A sensitized thermal cell recovered using heat

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Communication
Submitted
18 Apr 2019
Accepted
20 Jun 2019
First published
20 Jun 2019

J. Mater. Chem. A, 2019,7, 18249-18256

A sensitized thermal cell recovered using heat

S. Matsushita, T. Araki, B. Mei, S. Sugawara, Y. Inagawa, J. Nishiyama, T. Isobe and A. Nakajima, J. Mater. Chem. A, 2019, 7, 18249 DOI: 10.1039/C9TA04060A

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