Project description
How plant surfaces charge up and how to utilize this phenomenon technically
Plants and trees are not only the world’s ‘lungs’. Their leaves create electric charge when, for example, raindrops or other materials fall on them. Contact electrification is relevant to processes including printing and energy harvesting. In nature, electric fields affect phenomena like pollination. Despite this relevance, little is known about what role surface electrification plays in nature. The ERC-funded EpiC project aims to find out how plants are affected by electrification and whether the generated charge can be used to power man-made devices. Answering these two questions could help the team to enable environmental sensing, robotics and synthetic reactors with energy-autonomous ‘artificial leaves’ while protecting the plants that host them.
Objective
The materials on the outer plant surface create the world's largest bio-air interface. Invisibly, this surface spontaneously charges when hit by raindrops and solid materials. This is due to contact electrification, a phenomenon used in technologies like printing and energy harvesting. Yet, extraordinarily little is known about its role in nature and how biosurfaces charge.
EpiC will target two exciting and unresolved questions: a) can one exploit the generated charges to power high-tech devices at the leaf-air interface? and b) how is the organism affected by the electric fields generated on the outer leaf surface?
The core of EpiC is thus a detailed surface analysis to gain the highest resolved insights in solid and liquid contact electrification of biosurfaces. To achieve this, I will combine studies of materials surface charging, chemical, and topographical analyses with observations of cellular responses, plant growth, and adaptation.
This data set will then indicate how to engineer material systems named 'artificial leaves' that can be installed on the plant leaf or sprayed on it to harvest the contact charges for technical purposes. EpiC will eventually enable energy harvesting, environmental and plant health sensing, communication with robots, and electrocatalytic reactions - autonomously driven by electricity and reactants from the leaf environment. Moreover, I will develop additional features in the materials of the artificial leaf to specifically protect the plant and to boost its growth during energy harvesting.
The result of EpiC will be new insights into contact charging of materials in nature, its effect on plant life, and a ground-breaking, energy-autonomous, and sustainable technology platform for the world's most significant bio-air interface with cross-disciplinary impact in materials science, environmental sensing and robotics, smarter agriculture, and plant-based bioelectrochemical systems.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries agriculture
- engineering and technology electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering electronic engineering robotics
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2023-COG
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56127 Pisa
Italy
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