Pervaporation-driven electrokinetic energy harvesting using poly(dimethylsiloxane) microfluidic chips

Electrokinetic energy harvesting from evaporation-driven flows in porous materials has recently been the subject of numerous studies, particularly with the development of nanomaterials with high conversion efficiencies. The configuration in which the energy conversion element is located upstream of the element which passively drives the evaporative flow has rarely been studied. However, this configuration offers the possibility of increasing the harvested energy simply by increasing the evaporation surface area and/or the hydraulic resistance of the energy conversion element. In this work, we investigate this configuration with poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) chips playing the role of artificial leaves driving a pervaporation-induced flow through a polystyrene colloid plug in a submillimetre tube for the energy conversion. With an appropriate design of the venation of the PDMS leaves, we report the first experimental evidence of electrokinetic energy conversion from pervaporation-induced flows, which increases with the pervaporation area. We also provide new insights by demonstrating that this increase is limited by cavitation within the PDMS leaves, which occurs systematically as soon as the water pressure inside the leaf reaches P_leaf ≃ 0 bar. Whatever the cavitation threshold, this phenomenon imposes an intrinsic limit on this configuration, underlining the need for innovative strategies to improve the harvesting of electrokinetic energy by evaporation.