Nano-catalytic energy cell

尽管效率较低，但燃烧液体燃料产生机电动力是最简单、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，既可以燃烧，也可以不燃烧，从而导致很大比例的能量浪费。在微米和纳米尺度上创造局部加热是一项艰巨的挑战。没有纳米尺度甚至微米尺度的火焰。我们早期的研究表明，铂纳米颗粒催化甲醇转化为非常局域的热，通过红外测温仪观察到单个颗粒变红。即使纳米颗粒周围的温度可以达到数百摄氏度，整个设备也可以保持在室温下。这种纳米催化过程的观察可以用来在悬浮的微细加工热电结构上产生可持续的热梯度，用于将液体燃料(如甲醇)直接转化为电能。我们的理论是，支撑在微机械结构上的纳米催化加热区可以创造出比宏观尺度大两到三个数量级的微观超高热梯度。保持如此高的热梯度，可以通过纳米结构热电能量转换系统将纳米热能高效地直接转换为电能，而不需要任何移动部件。燃料的化学能在预定义的局部纳米催化加热区自发释放为热能，而不需要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常温。这一概念有可能开发出一种电池大小的微型能量转换器，使用甲醇作为燃料，可以根据需要进行充电。然而，在实现这样的目标之前，需要对许多实际方面进行优化。没有明显的理论障碍，使纳米机器人成为一个完全可扩展的分布式电力系统，其比功率和能量可以比现有电池好10-100倍。这项提议的第一个目标是捏造和

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