MATERIALS FOR ENERGY RESEARCH UPDATE

Thermogalvanic hydrogel cools down electronic devices

05 Jun 2020 Isabelle Dumé

A hydrogel can cool off electronics and generate electricity from their waste heat. Scale bar, 2 cm. Courtesy: Adapted
from Nano Letters 2020, DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c00800

A new thermogalvanic hydrogel can simultaneously cool down electronic devices and convert the waste
heat they produce into electricity. The material, developed by a team of researchers at Wuhan University
in China and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in the US, decreases the temperature of a
mobile phone battery by 20°C and retrieves 5 μW of electricity at fast discharging rates. This reduced
working temperature ensures that the battery operates safely, while the amount of electricity harvested
is enough to power the hydrogel’s cooling system.
Many electronic devices — including solar cells and light-emitting diodes as well as phone batteries –
generate significant amounts of heat during normal operation. Not only is most of this heat wasted, it
can also lead to localized overheating, which decreases the devices’ efficiency and lifespan. In some
cases, the excess heat can even cause devices to explode or catch fire.

Traditional ways of recovering waste heat, such as

thermoelectric modules, involve adding extra thermal
resistance. Unfortunately, this additional resistance
prevents heat from dissipating, and thus increases the
temperature of the electronic device’s core components.
Removing heat tends to consume energy, especially if
additional equipment like fans or pumps are required.
This apparent conflict means that while researchers have
previously succeeded in recovering waste heat from
electronic devices, and in efficiently removing it, they have
never accomplished both at the same time. Advertisement

Separate thermodynamic cycles

Thermogalvanic cells, which consist of an electrolyte solution surrounded by two inert electrodes, show
promise in reconciling the competing tasks of removing heat and converting it to electricity. In such a
cell, electron-transferring (redox) reactions convert heat energy into electricity. Since the solvent in the
cell’s electrolyte solution is only present to support ion transport and electron transfer, it can undergo a
separate thermodynamic cycle without affecting the heat-to-electricity conversion process. Hence, the
water molecules in aqueous electrolytes can be allowed to evaporate and condense, completing a cycle
of heat absorption and release that cools down the cell even as the thermal-electric conversion process
continues.

A team led by Kang Liu of Wuhan University and Jun Chen of UCLA’s Department of Bioengineering has
now developed a hydrogel film to accomplish this task. The hydrogel is based on a polyacrylamide
framework infused with potassium, lithium, and bromine ions, as well as the ferricyanide ions Fe(CN)63−
and Fe(CN)64−.

When heated, the ferricyanide ions transfer electrons between the cell’s electrodes, generating
electricity. At the same time, confined water in the hydrogel is allowed to freely evaporate, which
removes a large amount of heat without affecting the thermal-electric conversion process. The positive
lithium and negative bromine ions serve to control the system’s moisture balance, facilitating water
absorption from the surrounding air and thus “regenerating” the hydrogel.

Battery cooling
 To show that their new hydrogel film could cool a real-world device, the researchers attached it to a
mobile phone battery during fast discharging of 2.2 C (where C is a measure of the rate at which a
battery is discharged relative to its maximum capacity). They found that some of the waste heat was
converted into 5 μW of electricity and that the temperature of the battery deceased by 20°C.

The researchers found that their film, which measured around 12 x 30 x 3.6 mm, is robust, with a
mechanical strength of 0.24 MPa. They also showed that it can be stretched up to 2-3 times its original
length without suffering any damage. Full details of the new thermogalvanic hydrogel are reported in
Nano Letters.

Isabelle Dumé is a contributing editor to Physics World

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