Issue 6, 2022

Multisource energy conversion in plants with soft epicuticular coatings

Abstract

Living plants have recently been exploited for unusual tasks such as energy conversion and environmental sensing. Yet, using plants as small-scale autonomous energy sources is often impeded by multicable and -electrode installations on the plants. Moreover, insufficient power outputs for steadily driving even low-power electronics made a realization challenging. Here, we show that plants, by a modification of the leaf epicuticular region can be transformed into cable-free, fully plant-enabled integrated devices for multisource energy conversion. In detail, leaf contact electrification caused by wind-induced inter-leaf tangency is magnified by a transparent elastomeric coating on one of two interacting leaves. This enables converting wind energy into harvestable electricity. Further, the same plant is used as an unmatched Marconi-antenna for multi-band radio frequency (RF) energy conversion. This enables the use of the same plant as a complementary multi-energy system with augmented power output if both sources are used simultaneously. In combination, we observed over 1000% enhanced energy accumulation respective to single source harvesting in the specific application case and common plants like ivy could power a commercial sensing platform wirelessly transmitting environmental data. This shows that living plants have potential to autonomously supply application-oriented electronics while maintaining the positive environmental impact by their intrinsic sustainability and benefits such as O2 production, CO2 fixation, self-repair, and many more.

Graphical abstract: Multisource energy conversion in plants with soft epicuticular coatings

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
04 Feb 2022
Accepted
05 Apr 2022
First published
13 May 2022
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Energy Environ. Sci., 2022,15, 2545-2556

Multisource energy conversion in plants with soft epicuticular coatings

F. Meder, A. Mondini, F. Visentin, G. Zini, M. Crepaldi and B. Mazzolai, Energy Environ. Sci., 2022, 15, 2545 DOI: 10.1039/D2EE00405D

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