Researchers harvest electricity from human motion

Through a recently created device, researchers are now able to generate electricity from human motion. The device can help people to charge phones, fitness tracker and other personal electronics while we move about our usual life.

Researchers from the Vanderbilt University developed the ultra-thin device that can be placed in the fabric of clothing. Lead researcher Cary Pint said, “In the future, I expect that we will all become charging depots for our personal devices by pulling energy directly from our motions and the environment.”

Being 1/5000th the thickness of a human hair, the device can dig out even faintest of human movement like sitting or standing. According to Science Alert, Pint expressed, “Compared to the other approaches designed to harvest energy from human motion, our method has two fundamental advantages. The materials are atomically thin and small enough to be impregnated into textiles without affecting the fabric's look or feel and it can extract energy from movements that are slower than 10 Hertz – 10 cycles per second – over the whole low-frequency window of movements corresponding to human motion.”

The device was made through a film of black phosphorus. An electrolyte was put between two black phosphorus electrodes that are made of black phosphorus and graphene. When they were made to work with each other, they bend and flex for creating energy.

Keeping the safety issues in view, Pint made it clear that the material won’t cause any tech-triggered harm. She confirms, “One of the peer reviewers for our paper raised the question of safety. That isn't a problem here. Batteries usually catch on fire when the positive and negative electrodes are shorted, which ignites the electrolyte.

“Because our harvester has two identical electrodes, shorting it will do nothing more than inhibit the device from harvesting energy. It is true that our prototype will catch on fire if you put it under a blowtorch but we can eliminate even this concern by using a solid-state electrolyte.”

Pint thinks that in the future the technology might electrify clothing that would make it possible for the person to change colors and patterns through swiping their smart phones, reports Science Daily.

Furthermore, Pint has a firm belief that this new device can prove to be more beneficial and has more probable uses beyond power systems. “When incorporated into clothing, our device can translate human motion into an electrical signal with high sensitivity that could provide a historical record of our movements. Or clothes that track our motions in three dimensions could be integrated with virtual reality technology. There are many directions that this could go,” she concluded.