Publication date: 15th December 2025
Water drops sliding on insulating, hydrophobic substrates can become electrically charged [1–3]. Despite many decades of research, this spontaneous electrification of moving drops still provides challenges and open fundamental questions. For example, the effect of electrostatic forces on droplet motion has been ignored for a long time [2]. But also the charging process itself is still not fully understood. By precisely measuring charge and voltage, we found that moving water drops accumulate a voltage of several kilovolts after sliding for just a few centimeters [3]. To enable an efficient utilization of this simple electric energy generation mechanism, we developed a simple, yet powerful and quantitative model of the underlying physical processes. Using a simple electrostatic model, we show that the drop voltage is fundamentally connected to the properties of the electrostatic double layer at solid-liquid interfaces. The observation of high drop voltages will have important implications for energy harvesting applications, as well as droplet microfluidics and electrostatic discharge protection.
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