Nano-catalytic energy cell

燃烧液体燃料产生机械能和电能，虽然效率低，但却是最简单、最常用的能量转换方法。一般来说，燃烧是一种不受控制的现象，一个人可以燃烧或不燃烧，导致很大比例的能源浪费。在微纳米尺度上制造局部加热是一项艰巨的挑战。没有纳米级甚至微米级的火焰。我们早期的研究表明，铂纳米颗粒催化将甲醇转化为非常局部的热量，通过红外测温仪观察到单个颗粒变红。尽管纳米颗粒周围的温度可能高达数百摄氏度，但整个装置可以保持在室温下。这种纳米催化过程的观察结果可用于在悬浮微制造热电结构上产生可持续的热梯度，以直接将液体燃料（如甲醇）转化为电能。我们推测，在微机械结构上支持的纳米催化加热区可以产生微尺度的超高热梯度，比在宏观尺度上可以实现的要大两到三个数量级。保持如此高的热梯度，可以通过纳米结构的热电能量转换系统，在没有任何移动部件的情况下，将纳米燃烧的热量高效地直接转化为电能。燃料的化学能在预定义的局部纳米催化加热区自发地释放为热能，而无需传统的点火或高温气相燃烧/燃烧，而整个装置的整体温度保持在环境温度。这一概念有可能开发出一种微型能量转换器，其大小与电池差不多，使用甲醇作为燃料，可以根据需要进行充电。然而，在实现这一目标之前，需要对许多实际方面进行优化。要使纳米燃烧成为一种完全可扩展的分布式电力系统，并没有明显的理论障碍，这种系统的特定功率和能量比现有电池高10-100倍。这个提议的第一个目标是编造和

Despite its low efficiency, burning liquid fuel to generate mechanical and electrical power is the simplest and commonly used energy conversion method. In general, burning is an uncontrolled phenomenon where one can have either burning or no burning resulting in large percentage of wasted energy. Creating localized heating at micro and nanoscale is a formidable challenge. There is no nanoscale or even microscale flame. Our earlier research has shown that nanoparticles of platinum catalytically convert methanol into very localized heat with individual particles turning red hot as observed by infrared thermometry. Even though the temperature around the nanoparticle can be hundreds of degrees centigrade, the entire device can remain at room temperature. This observation of nanocatalytic process can be used to generate sustainable thermal gradient on suspended microfabricated thermoelectric structures for direct conversion of liquid fuel, such as methanol, into electricity. We theorize that nanocatalytic heating zone supported on a micro-machined structure can create a micro-scale ultra-high thermal gradient that is two to three orders of magnitude greater than what can be achieved in macroscale. Maintaining such a high thermal gradient enables high-efficiency direct conversion of nanoburning heat into electricity through a nanostructured thermoelectric energy conversion system without any moving parts. The fuel's chemical energy spontaneously releases to thermal energy at predefined localized nanocatalytic heating zones without conventional ignition or high temperature gas-phase burning/combustions while bulk temperature of the entire device remains at ambient. This concept has the potential for developing a miniature energy converter the size of a battery that uses methanol as fuel, which can be recharged as needed. However, before such a goal can be achieved, many practical aspects need to be optimized. There is no apparent theoretical obstacle to making nanoburning a fully scalable distributed power system that could have specific power and energy 10-100 times better than existing batteries. The first goal of this proposal is to fabricate and