• Shake and Charge Your Mobile Phones

    Shake and Charge Your Mobile Phones

    Techtree News Staff, Mar 30, 2009 1714 hrs IST

    Generate electricity by subjecting an object to physical or mechanical stress

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If a bunch of ingenious researchers are to be believed, the day isn't far when most of your gadgets would be powered by nanogenerators- tiny zinc oxide wires that possess piezoelectric properties.


 


If that went over your head, let us explain. Piezoelectric properties point toward the capability of an object to generate electricity (albeit tiny amounts of them, at least for now) when the object is bent, stretched or when subject to any physical or mechanical stress.


 


In short, with this capability added, any object that can "move" can be made capable of drawing power from the movement itself. The nano wires used to power these future gadgets possess the aforementioned piezoelectric abilities and are not only very small in size but also very thin. Each nanowire is 25 times thinner than a human hair!


 


The lead researcher behind this project, Zhong Lin Wang, believes that the device can be in the future used to power cellphones and gadgets.  Imagine, being able to charge your phone by merely moving it or shaking it? Even though these might sound farfetched now, a few years down the line, this might just become routine.


 


Apart from their use in charging gadgets, nanogenerators could be used in defense technology and biomedical sciences. Wang also demonstrated a video in which a single nanowire attached to a hamster managed to create 70 millivolts (.07 volts) of electricity.


 


Although this might sound too insignificant now, the team has managed to generate up to 0.2 volts of electricity, and with further improvements expected, the figure is sure to go up. Just to put things into perspective, a USB powered device uses about 5 volts of electricity. So I guess we still have a long way to go.

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Discussion Board
(7) Comments
prasanth
,chennai, on Aug 22, 2011 11:00 AM
its quite interesting but i want to know the correct description of this project please send me this to my email address.
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Stewart
,Loveland, on Apr 06, 2009 07:47 PM
OK, great, the can induce a voltage, but does that also come with any CURRENT??? POWER = VOLTAGE X CURRENT
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Stewart
,Loveland, on Apr 06, 2009 07:52 PM
Oops, Sorry, I meant: OK, great, they can induce a voltage, but does that also come with any CURRENT??? POWER = VOLTAGE X CURRENT. If the current is very low, then the usable POWER is also very low. A simple LED requires around 10 mA. The article never mentions current or power
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chandu
,chennai, on Apr 01, 2009 11:51 AM
this is very useful for all
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Sandeep Parikh
,Mumbai, on Mar 31, 2009 06:15 PM
The technology for self charging is already available in the form of automatic watches. The same can be modified and used for mobile phones and other appliances.
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Reeta
,Prospect Heights, on Mar 31, 2009 06:09 PM
this would be a real break through... and will save lot of electricity....it will encourage more people to use mobile phones ....
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Nirmal Gupta
,Morena (M.P.), on Mar 31, 2009 10:00 AM
yaaa it's Right and i also think that, i was working to Solve electric problem from world for every human being and i have made also this Concept and i will help me to make my research well>>Best>...
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