The phenomenon of electrical potential differences along the plant apoplast has been reported for more than a century. Earlier works of harvesting energy from trees reported nW range of power with a few hundred-mV ope...The phenomenon of electrical potential differences along the plant apoplast has been reported for more than a century. Earlier works of harvesting energy from trees reported nW range of power with a few hundred-mV open circuit voltage and near uA range short circuit current. In this work, we show that if we cut a stem into pieces, each segment would maintain nearly the same open circuit voltage and short circuit current regardless of length. Using a pico-ampere meter, we also found that the living cells in the vascular cambial and secondary xylem and phloem tissues are the source of electricity. They provide a relatively constant voltage and current to external environment for reasons still under investigation. We demonstrate that by cascading separated stems we can accumulate up to 2 V of open circuit voltage. We also demonstrate by connecting them in parallel we can increase the short circuit current.展开更多
基金Acknowledgments This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. EEC-0540832. The authors also wish to acknowledge the contributions to discussions on plant electrophysiology by Dr. Dan Kostov and Dr. Xing Chen.
文摘The phenomenon of electrical potential differences along the plant apoplast has been reported for more than a century. Earlier works of harvesting energy from trees reported nW range of power with a few hundred-mV open circuit voltage and near uA range short circuit current. In this work, we show that if we cut a stem into pieces, each segment would maintain nearly the same open circuit voltage and short circuit current regardless of length. Using a pico-ampere meter, we also found that the living cells in the vascular cambial and secondary xylem and phloem tissues are the source of electricity. They provide a relatively constant voltage and current to external environment for reasons still under investigation. We demonstrate that by cascading separated stems we can accumulate up to 2 V of open circuit voltage. We also demonstrate by connecting them in parallel we can increase the short circuit current.
