US Patent Issued to University of Hawai'i on Dec. 30 for "Self-charging droplet capacitor for harvesting low-level ambient energy" (Hawaii Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 31 -- United States Patent no. 12,512,770, issued on Dec. 30, was assigned to University of Hawai'i (Honolulu).

"Self-charging droplet capacitor for harvesting low-level ambient energy" was invented by Tianwei Ma (Honolulu) and Jian Yu (Honolulu).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A self-charging droplet capacitor for harvesting low-level ambient energy is provided. The capacitor includes a conductive liquid droplet, which is placed on a heterogeneous and hydrophobic surface of dielectric materials coated onto a conductive substrate. The substrate and the droplet, along with the dielectric materials in between, form a parallel-plate type capacitor. The droplet is free to move...