Illustration of the experimental set-up. A liquid droplet is sandwiched between graphene and a SiO2/Si wafer, and drawn by the wafer at specific velocities. Inset: a droplet of 0.6 M NaCl solution on a graphene surface with advancing and receding contact angles of 91.98 and 60.28, respectively. Credit: Nature Nanotechnology (2014) doi:10.1038/nnano.2014.56 A team of researchers at China’s Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, studying graphene properties, has discovered that the act of dragging saltwater over a piece of graphene can generate electricity. In their paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, the team describes how in seeking to turn the idea of submerging carbon nanotubes in a flowing liquid to generate a voltage on its head, they came upon the idea of simply dragging water droplets across graphene instead. Because of graphene’s unique electrical properties, researchers have been hard at work trying to determine if it can be used to generate electricity at a lower cost (and in cleaner fashion) than conventional methods. To date, scientists have been using a technique whereby ionic fluids are pushed through different types of nanostructures—it works, but a pressure gradient must be used, which causes the approach to be inefficient. Others have looked at putting carbon nanotubes in
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