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Direct-current (d.c.) electricity generation using moving Schottky contact is emerging as a new strategy for mechanical energy conversion. Here, we demonstrate the generation of d.c.tunneling current with a density of ~35 A/m2 at a metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) sliding system using micro-tips. The measured current densities were found to be three to four orders of magnitude higher than that observed with the conventional polymer-based triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs). The electromotive force for the tribo-tunneling transport comes from the dynamic electronic excitation at the frictional interface rather than from the electrostatically trapped surface charges as in the case of conventional TENGs. The strong electronic excitation can give rise to a non-equilibrium interfacial charge variation. Depending on the energy distribution of the excited electrons/holes, the charge variation subsequently dissipates non-adiabatically into tunneling current and trapped surface charges, or adiabatically into heat. These fundamental results not only enhance our understanding of the triboelectric phenomenon, but also open up new paths for the development of next-generation mechanical energy harvesting and sensing techniques.

A double-stranded DNA unravels thermally through intermediate denatured bubble segments. Intrinsically, fluctuations ensue at the bubble boundaries from non-equilibrium (NE) energy exchanges with the environment. However, such details gets obscured by large population kinetics at the macroscale, associating equilibrium pathway to the unravelling landscape. In this work, we capture evidence of fluctuation energetics with picoliter samples in a microfluidic cantilever. We exploit nanomechanical resonance to measure the NE energy exchanges through dissipation, revealing a crucial pre-melting transition at T~42C . This signifies that unravelling possibly proceeds via intermediate collapsed-bubble conformations releasing energy, sufficient to unbind bubble ends, assisting further unbinding. Fluctuation theorem explains the observations opening further avenues to investigate fluctuation kinetics in other biological phenomena that also proceed through similar NE energetics., Comment: Manuscript and Supplementary Information