Ion Transport in Nanofluidic Devices for Energy Harvesting

Our technological systems are mainly based on semiconductor photovoltaics, electronic circuits, and (electro)chemical storage reactions. However, in the energy field, ionics'' has the potential to complement electronics.'' The control of ion transport is a necessary condition for the existence of life, e.g., both the energy conversion into ATP and the energy consumption to regulate biological functions occurs via directed ion or proton transport. These processes can be mimicked in synthetic devices and (nano)machines and then used for energy harvesting. This review will discuss and summarize the state of the art in the field of ion-transport-based energy conversion systems including ion passive transport for salinity gradient energy conversion and ion active transport for solar energy harvesting and then venture to propose several potential strategies to construct ion transport (passive or active) systems for energy conversion and storage devices, which are useful to drive local chemical reactions or electric current generation.