Scientists see a future where homes are powered by wallpaper

Rooftop solar panels have officially hit the mainstream, topping over 6 million American homes. But your roof is no longer the only domestic real estate eyeing a green energy makeover. What if your living room walls could harvest electricity from thin air? Researchers at Binghamton University have unveiled a paper-based, energy-harvesting “wallpaper” that converts indoor humidity into real electric current.

“We put a lot of energy into HVAC systems to remove moisture from the air, but if we use this concept, we could reduce or control moisture levels while also generating electricity,” said Professor Seokheun “Sean” Choi, a faculty member at the Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

The wallpaper technology depends on tiny Moist Electric Generators (MEGs). These microscopic powerhouses draw ambient water vapor from the air. Once trapped, the moisture forces ions inside the material to separate, creating a natural concentration gradient. That subtle shift creates a steady voltage between the front and back of the paper, and interestingly, no sunlight is required.

Engineers have played with moisture and energy harvesting tech before, but previous designs focused almost exclusively on the unpredictable outdoors. Rainstorms can cause power to spike, while blistering sun can kill it completely.

The Home of the Future, a keynote by futurist Matthew Griffin

On the other hand, indoor air is a stable environment. Most homes stay between 30 percent and 60 percent humidity year-round. Better yet, everyday human life constantly recharges the system. Cooking dinner, taking a hot shower, or simply breathing out fills the room with untapped potential.

To make the tech cheap, functional, and attractive, the team drew on Papertronics - the art of printing electronic circuits directly onto paper.

The layout works like a miniature circuit board. Glycerol applied along the outer edges acts as a sponge, snatching water molecules from the surrounding room. At the centre sits a raised polymer layer patterned with wax. This central structure carefully controls how water evaporates, maintaining a directional flow of moisture across the sheet to keep electricity flowing continuously.

The researchers demonstrated the design’s practical power by building a full-scale wallpaper sheet with 1,596 interconnected units. A single unit produces roughly 0.34 V with a power density of 2.2 µW/cm² at 80 percent relative humidity. This large-scale array generated enough continuous electricity to power a wireless keyboard without any batteries. Beyond power, the array dropped indoor humidity in a test space from 38 percent down to 32 percent, proving its dual role as a passive dehumidifier.

Nobody wants a living room wall crisscrossed with messy wires. To fix the aesthetic problem, the researchers routed every connection behind the wallpaper.

You will not power a refrigerator with paper walls, at least not anytime soon. These sheets yield modest microwatt-level power, designed specifically for low-draw connected home devices. Think smart thermostats, ambient temperature sensors, indoor climate monitors, and wireless keyboards.

Instead of swapping out toxic batteries every few months, the growing constellation of Internet of Things (IoT) gizmos in modern homes could simply run off the walls.

Homeowners could generate clean energy and ease the strain on their air conditioners by letting the walls do some of the work. Should Choi’s vision reach mass production, the next frontier of home energy efficiency could soon be hanging right on your walls.

The findings were published in the journal Advanced Energy.