Nanoporous materials generate electricity from humidity

Posts circulating this week describe humidity-powered electricity as if it were a fresh breakthrough. The underlying claim, however, traces to peer-reviewed work published in 2023 by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who reported that thin films with nanoscale pores could produce a continuous electrical output from moisture in air. The work builds on an earlier 2020 Nature paper from the same research line that used protein nanowires to harvest power from ambient humidity. What is new in the social posts is the attention, not the core scientific result. ### Where did the “electricity from humidity” claim actually come from? A May 23, 2023 UMass Amherst release said Jun Yao's group had shown that “nearly any material” could be turned into a device that continuously harvests electricity from humidity in the air if it was engineered with the right nanopores. The university said the work appeared in Advanced Materials and named Xiaomeng Liu as lead author and Yao as senior author. (umass.edu) The paper abstract says the effect comes from a broad class of inorganic, organic and biological materials, not one exotic substance. The authors wrote that the common feature is “appropriate nanopores” that let air and water interact at a porous interface, creating surface charging and a sustained charging gradient between an exposed top surface and a sealed bottom surface in a thin-film device. (umass.edu) ### Why do the pores matter so much? UMass Amherst said the materials must have holes smaller than 100 nanometers in diameter. Yao's team linked that threshold to the mean free path of water molecules in air, arguing that pores in that range help create the imbalance needed for charge separation. The researchers described the device as a “human-built, small-scale cloud,” language that appears to have been repeated in later social-media explanations. (par.nsf.gov) That is an analogy from the lab, not evidence that the device works like a thunderstorm or produces large amounts of power. The paper itself frames the mechanism in terms of adsorption-desorption exchange at porous interfaces and a “leaky capacitor” model used to describe the observed current behavior. (umass.edu) ### Is this the same as the earlier Air-gen work? A 2020 Nature paper from Yao and collaborators reported sustained power generation from ambient humidity using protein nanowires from Geobacter sulfurreducens. That earlier device was material-specific. The 2023 Advanced Materials work argued that the effect is more general and can be reproduced across many nanoporous materials. UMass Amherst's description of the 2023 paper explicitly said the new result built on the 2020 Geobacter finding. (umass.edu) The later paper's central claim was that the “Air-gen effect” is generic if the material and device geometry meet the pore-size and interface requirements. ### Does this mean phones or homes can run on humidity now? The published research describes laboratory devices and proposed applications, not a commercial power source for household loads. (nature.com) A 2025 UMass Amherst engineering update said the group had received a $1.5 million National Science Foundation award to develop wafer-scale, modular Air-gen systems for Internet of Things and wearable devices. The same update said the project aimed to integrate the technology into sleep-monitoring and environmental-monitoring systems. (umass.edu) Nature Reviews Materials described moisture-sorption-based energy harvesting as a promising strategy, but that literature treats the field as emerging and focused on materials, mechanisms and device design. In other words, the science is real enough to support peer-reviewed papers and follow-on funding, but the practical use case remains low-power electronics rather than grid-scale generation. (umass.edu) ### What should readers make of the viral posts? The social posts are directionally consistent with the published research in saying nanoporous materials can harvest electricity from humidity. What they often omit is the citation trail: the peer-reviewed anchor is the 2023 Advanced Materials paper, and the broader research lineage includes the 2020 Nature study on protein nanowires. A September 11, 2025 UMass Amherst update said the next step is scaling Air-gen devices for sensors and wearables. (nature.com) That is the clearest named milestone attached to the work so far. (umass.edu) (par.nsf.gov)