Thermally Driven Transport and Relaxation Switching Self‐Powered Electromagnetic Energy Conversion

TLDR

Electromagnetic radiation from industrial substations poses health risks, and heat generation with rising temperatures degrades device performance. The study proposes harvesting, converting, and storing waste energy by using graphene‑silica xerogel and a material‑genes sequencing strategy to turn heat into an advantage for self‑powered electromagnetic devices. By hierarchically designing graphene‑silica xerogel with well‑sequenced genes, the authors exploit thermally driven relaxation and charge transport in graphene networks to achieve efficient energy conversion and self‑circulation.

Abstract

Electromagnetic energy radiation is becoming a "health-killer" of living bodies, especially around industrial transformer substation and electricity pylon. Harvesting, converting, and storing waste energy for recycling are considered the ideal ways to control electromagnetic radiation. However, heat-generation and temperature-rising with performance degradation remain big problems. Herein, graphene-silica xerogel is dissected hierarchically from functions to "genes," thermally driven relaxation and charge transport, experimentally and theoretically, demonstrating a competitive synergy on energy conversion. A generic approach of "material genes sequencing" is proposed, tactfully transforming the negative effects of heat energy to superiority for switching self-powered and self-circulated electromagnetic devices, beneficial for waste energy harvesting, conversion, and storage. Graphene networks with "well-sequencing genes" (w = P