Imagine charging your smart phones and hand-held devices by a mere touch! Thankfully you wont have to wait too long as scientists have made this one fantastical idea into reality; by developing a flexible, film like material that generates electrical current when touched.
Thinking beyond just touch-screen devices, researchers conclude that the thin, flexible device could be employed for usage in our clothing or shoes, helping us in harvesting energy from our body movements indefinitely.
"We're on the path toward wearable devices powered by human motion, what I foresee, relatively soon, is the capability of not having to charge your cell phone for an entire week, for example, because that energy will be produced by your movement," says electrical engineer Nelson Sepulveda from Michigan State University.
The film created is whats known as a nano-generator, where energy is produced by miniscule physical changes, such as tapping or swiping of a finger.
In this instance however, the devices functions on the principle of piezoelectricity, where an electric charge builds up in response to applied mechanical stress.
What makes this possible is the interaction between the substances that make up the film.
The core structure is a silicon wafer, which is then layered with thin sheets of other materials, including silver, polyimide, and polypropylene ferroelectric, which serves as the active material in the device.
Polypropylene ferroelectric is a thin polymer foam that contains charged particles. When pressure is applied to the device, the foam layer compresses, creating a change in what's called dipole moments an interaction between positive and negatively charged molecules in the ferroelectric, this in turn generates an electric charge.
It may albeit a while, before we shall get to see this technology in the consumers market, however when it does hit, it will give us a means of repurposing the energy our bodies make while it is locomotive.