Huh, now here’s a novel concept: harness the force you use to type to juice your phone’s battery. Georgia Institute of Technology researchers are working hard to pull it off.
“Using nanotechnology, we have demonstrated ways to convert even irregular biomechanical energy into electricity,” said Zhong Lin Wang, a Regent’s professor in the Georgia Tech School of Materials Science and Engineering. “This technology can convert any mechanical disturbance into electrical energy.” … The nanogenerator power is produced by the piezoelectric effect, a phenomenon in which certain materials – such as zinc oxide wires – produce electrical charges when they are bent and then relaxed. The wires are between 100 and 800 nanometers in diameter, and between 100 and 500 microns in length.
Obviously this has far-reaching effects for any kind of personal items (shoes, clothes, chairs, you name it), but for mobile, you could have a specialized holster that generates power simply by the way your phone jostles when you walk. In terms of scale, you would need a couple of thousand of these nanowires in order to power a Bluetooth headset. OEMs were all talking about being green-friendly at CES, and I suspect a technology like this would be quickly adopted by the more forward-thinking manufacturers out there. For the time being, the Wang Team has only pulled this off with the above-pictured hamster, but it shows that “we really can harness human or animal motion to generate current.”
[via Newswise]