Smart Nanofluidic Transistors for High-Efficiency Blue Energy Harvesting: The Hidden Role of Ion Hydration

Osmotic energy harvesting from salinity gradients has emerged as a promising route for sustainable power generation; however, achieving high power output and efficiency remains limited by ionic selectivity and internal resistance in conventional membranes. In this work, we investigate osmotic energy conversion in polymer-coated ionic nanotransistors under high salinity gradients using a coupled Poisson–Nernst–Planck and Navier–Stokes numerical framework. The influence of cation type in three monovalent electrolytes (NaCl, KCl, and LiCl) is systematically examined for two soft-gated nanotransistor configurations (NPN and PNP). A key innovation of this study is the identification of a configuration-dependent…

• IU
  Iran University of Science and Technology