Scientists have discovered that ordinary ice has the superpower of generating electricity in response to the physical stress of bending, a phenomenon confirmed through two newly identified mechanisms: flexoelectricity and ferroelectricity.
It is primarily distinctive from piezoelectric materials, which accumulate an electric charge when they are compressed.
It is quite evident that a solid ice cube will not bend, but a team of researchers has found that electric properties can be activated by blending a much thinner slab.
The team led by the physicist Xin Wen from Xi’an Jiaotong University in China experimented with salty ice and found that it can generate an electric charge one thousand times stronger than pure ice alone.
It is recognized that glaciers colliding with ice sheet cracks generate electricity because of an enormous amount of stress, but the exact role of the ice’s inherent mechanical strain gradient of ice remained a mystery until recently.
The laboratory experiments showed that ice particles cause electrification of hailstones inside thunderclouds, and the results turned out to be consistent with what occurs in nature.
This means the interactions between these particles have to do with lightning that strikes across the sky during a thunderstorm.
A study published in the journal Nature Physics demonstrates far-reaching results of our understanding, stating, "Our calculations of flexoelectric charge density generated in collisions inside thunderstorm clouds compare favorably to the experienced charge transferred in synch events, suggesting a possible participation of ice flexoelectricity in the generation of lightning."
Researchers bent sheets of ice with salt concentration gradients and found that more electricity came from higher salt concentrations, peaking in ice that was 25% salt. The resulting charge was a thousand times greater than that of regular ice but a million times more powerful than salt alone.
It has been observed that saline ice generates more electricity because of a flowing stream, water and salt molecules that are pushed from the compressed side to the stretched side of a bent sheet of saltwater ice.
Ice is a polycrystalline substance that is structured from distinct types of crystals that can travel through spaces between crystals.
The phenomenon of streaming flexoelectricity could be massive for our ability to harvest energy from water.
This could be a sustainable, renewable energy source, and future implications can lead to better future developments.
The study concludes that ordinary water ice is an active electro-mechanical material that possesses two electrical superpowers and could be an energy source fueling prebiotic chemistry.