An integrated electricity generator harnessing water and solar energy featuring common-electrode configuration

Exploiting renewable and high-efficient energy sources is vital in shifting the fossil fuels-dominating energy structure to a green one in the era of intensifying energy crises facing human society. Among various strategies, harvesting energy from inexhaustive solar and water energies has gained increasing attention owing to their ubiquity and eco-friendliness. Although solar panels and droplet-based electricity generators (DEGs) are capable of harnessing solar and water energy, respectively, developing new technologies that collect both energy sources without scarifying their respective performance remains challenging owing to their contrary requirements on weather conditions. Here, we report a hybrid electricity generator with a common-electrode architecture that seamlessly integrates the solar panel and DEG, eliminating the unwanted optical attenuation and imparting ∼10% enhancement on energy conversion efficiency in solar energy harvesting as opposed to existing studies without the utility of the common-electrode design. We envision that the integrating generator featuring the common-electrode architecture design can fundamentally change the energy landscape by synergistically harnessing the apparent advantages inherent in the two weather-dependency techniques.