Lightning in a Bottle: Accidental UMass Amherst Discovery Electrifies Media Outlets

A team of UMass researchers discovered a new way to harvest electricity out of thin air, and the findings have generated extensive media interest in recent weeks.

Covered by more than 140 news outlets globally, recent research out of the College of Engineering at UMass Amherst has received a downpour of media attention since May. Just a small sample of the wide variety of outlets include BBC, The Boston Globe, ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption,” The Guardian, Newsweek, Smithsonian Magazine, USA Today, The Jerusalem Post and The Washington Post.

As for why the discovery has gained so much traction, the paper’s senior author Jun Yao, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, puts it simply: “Energy is always important and becomes more and more important for technological development. Clean energy from the open air captures the wild imagination of possibilities for future technologies and sustainability.”

At the heart of the research, published in the journal Advanced Materials, is the fact that air can be a source of electricity.

“Think of a cloud, which is nothing more than a mass of water droplets,” Yao explained in the media release. “Each of those droplets contains a charge, and when conditions are right, the cloud can produce a lightning bolt—but we don’t know how to reliably capture electricity from lightning. What we’ve done is to create a human-built, small-scale cloud that produces electricity for us predictably and continuously so that we can harvest it.”

What Yao and colleagues discovered is that electricity can be generated from humidity in the air from any material that has holes smaller than 100 nanometers. They named their discovery the “generic Air-gen effect.”

The generic Air-gen effect is particularly enticing because it opens the door to an energy source that could avoid many of the pitfalls that hinder other renewable energy solutions. Unlike solar and wind, which are dependent on the weather or time of day, this new kind of electricity harvester can run under any weather condition, day or night.

Also, it’s not specific to one type of material so harvesters can be made with the most cost-effective and adaptable material. “You could image harvesters made of one kind of material for rainforest environments, and another for more arid regions,” Yao says.

Finally, the device can be scaled up, without impacting the size of its footprint.

“Imagine a future world in which clean electricity is available anywhere you go,” says Yao. “The generic Air-gen effect means that this future world can become a reality.”

Another facet to story gaining media interest is that the discovery was an accident. Yao told The Guardian that they were simply trying to make a sensor to detect humidity. When they forgot to plug it in, they were shocked that the device was still producing an electrical signal.

When asked how he feels about all the attention, Yao says, “I’m little bit surprised. On the one hand, it’s an encouragement to us to tell what we are doing is important, probably much more than what we initially thought. On the other, it certainly also urges us to further develop it.”