14 DAY TRIAL // A new generation of eco-friendly, self-powered electronics could soon come our way, and it appears that we will have a multi-university team of engineers to be thankful to once this happens.
Long story short, these brainiacs have developed a device that harvests vibration energy, and then converts it into electricity.
What's more, they say that the generator's output can be used to charge a phone or some other gadgets, thus making it possible for people to nurse their electronics back to life while on the go.
Since the device would be incorporated directly into a cell phone casing or the like, there will be no need to use an electrical cord.
Besides, the researchers who worked on this project say that the generator could harvest vibrations from a surface as simple and as ordinary as the passenger seat of a moving vehicle.
This means that nobody would have to do the samba to make sure that the device and, consequently, the phone have enough vibrations to feed on. Unless they really want to.
“We believe this development could be a new solution for creating self-charged personal electronics,” researcher Xudong Wang explained in a recent interview.
As detailed on the official website for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the device in question is called a mesoporous piezoelectric nanogenerator.
It a recent paper in the journal Advanced Energy Materials, the scientists who created it explain that it comprises two thin electrode sheets that have a mesoporous polymer film nestled in between them.
“The nanogenerator itself includes thin electrode sheets on the front and back of the mesoporous polymer film,” they say.
Furthermore, “In the case of a cell phone, it uses the phone's own weight to enhance its displacement and amplify its electrical output.”
They further detail that, because both its design and the process used to piece it together are fairly simple, switching to larger scale manufacturing should not be a very complicated thing to do.