Advances in polymer-based moist-electric generators

Tremendous moisture in the atmosphere has been explored to produce electricity in clean, ubiquitous, and all-weather ways, based on the ongoing development of an interesting moist-electric generator (MEG). Functional polymers demonstrate distinctive properties of strong moisture absorption, abundant groups for ion dissociation, easily-processing ability, and so on, which have been rapidly developed for MEGs over the past decade to enhance performance and enrich the applications greatly. Therefore, a systematic review on polymer-based MEGs is urgently needed to summarize previous works and provide sharp points for further developing high-performing MEGs. In this review, the basic principles of moisture-based power generation and the types of polymer materials explored in the electric generation layer are briefly described. The improvement strategies and latest applications of MEG are provided. In the end, the current challenges and the potential trends in MEG are also outlined to guide the design and synthesis of high-performance MEG devices in the future.