Nanogenerators and electrical clothing

Yes, thats right....electrical clothing. It seems silly, but could you not use something like this to help charge your cell phone, Ipod, or other portable device. Yes, its mundane....but just wait, there is more coming.

www.dailytech.com...

The idea is that fiber-based nanogenerators would be woven into the fabric of a shirt and the friction cause by moving around would be transferred into energy to power the device. Scientists even say that simply standing in a breeze could generate all the power your iPod needs to play indefinitely...

snip

...According to Wang, the researchers estimate that a fabric made with this process would generate around 80 mW of power per square meter of fabric. The researchers see the technology being used by hikers and soldiers in the field to power sensors and other electronic devices.

There is a drawback with this design, however...

Wang and his team have a major hurdle to overcome before the technology can be put into use. The zinc oxide required to create the electricity degrades when it gets wet. Research into a type of coating that will keep the zinc oxide from degrading in the wash or rain is underway.

But that isn't too much of a problem, if they would learn to communicate with each other....

more to come



[edit on 14-2-2008 by bigfatfurrytexan]

For those that may not have noticed, the above information was filed on the 14th (today). Those scientists are still struggling with the Zinc switches for their generators, when in October these guys announced the use of an improved material: barium titanate.

www.technologyreview.com...

Now researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have taken the first step toward building a nanogenerator out of barium titanate. So far, efforts to make nanogenerators have focused on zinc-oxide nanowires. But barium titanate could lead to better generators because it shows a stronger piezoelectric effect, says mechanical-science and engineering professor Min-Feng Yu, who is leading the research at UIUC. Lab experiments show that a barium-titanate nanowire can generate 16 times as much electricity as a zinc-oxide nanowire from the same amount of mechanical vibrations, he says.

16 times as much energy? That would yield 1280 mW in the scenario of the "electric fabric" noted above (which was only 80 mW).

The concept of piezoelectrics is just coming of age. Imagine:

1. Curtains made out of the fabric, taking the wind the ceiling fan creates and turning it back into electricity.

2. Embedding these generators onto a substrate that helps channel the electricty created into a circuit. You could literally build the house out of them.

3. Piezoelectric inclusion on solar panels, catching the wind and noise surrounding them and turning that into energy

4. Electric motor cars that is able to turn the wind and road vibration into energy to recharge its batteries

The list could go on and on, limited only by your creativity.

The future is just around the corner, folks. And this is true, peer reviewed, performed in the lab science. it is not Area 51, and (sans any DARPA intervention, such as what i suspect has happened to Dr. Li) it appears that it is already becoming entrenched in the public domain. Now if we cna just keep people interested long enough to keep it from being hidden.

Originally posted by bigfatfurrytexan
Yes, thats right....electrical clothing. It seems silly, but could you not use something like this to help charge your cell phone, Ipod, or other portable device. Yes, its mundane....but just wait, there is more coming.

www.dailytech.com...

This info was already posted a couple days back on this thread here.

Take a look.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Wow...no wonder i didn't see it. Where are the responses?

This is very disheartening. Good solid information about how to get away from dependance on oil, and people ignore it while posting rants about "Peak Oil".

Go figure.

Thanks for the link. However, did you read the follow up link?

[edit on 15-2-2008 by bigfatfurrytexan]

i work at www.advancednanotechnolgy.com
as you can see by our products we arent very 'advanced' lol
anyway im gona tell the guys at R&D department about this.. maybe they can come up with something usefull for once lol

It seems that the EU is working on piezoelectric power, as well:

en.epochtimes.com...

Scientists have constructed a revolutionary vibration-based battery, ten times more powerful than any other similar device.

The generator, designed by engineers at the University of Southampton, converts kinetic energy to electrical energy by utilising vibrations and movements present within its environment.

The generator may offer a potential replacement to standard batteries.

The team claim that the device could be adapted for use in wireless, self-powered tyre sensors and if developed further, could even form the basis of technology for self-powered pace makers.

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan


This is absolutely fascinating stuff. The concept of absolute efficiency.

Imagine an SR71 Blackbird that uses the tremendous heat it builds up in it's shock wave and recycles it into cooling devices that simultaneously cool the aircraft and allow it go even faster.

S&F! I know I'm resurrecting an old thread but it's a good one that should be used to keep track of progress in this field of study.

Originally posted by Scramjet76
reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan

 

This is absolutely fascinating stuff. The concept of absolute efficiency.

Imagine an SR71 Blackbird that uses the tremendous heat it builds up in it's shock wave and recycles it into cooling devices that simultaneously cool the aircraft and allow it go even faster.

S&F! I know I'm resurrecting an old thread but it's a good one that should be used to keep track of progress in this field of study.

Even more, you take the heat created by the blackbird and recover it as energy via thermoelectric material.

I found a link, albeit an old one from 2007:

But zinc oxide has its own advantages. It is nontoxic to biological systems, so it might be better suited than barium titanate for implantable devices. Also, it is easier to control zinc-oxide growth in order to fabricate nanowire arrays. "To make an applicable device, you need to have many nanowires with the same orientation in the same location," Xudong Wang says. That could be hard to achieve with barium titanate.

www.technologyreview.com

I searched for "Zhong Lin Wang" on the pubs.acs.org website and noticed he hasn't been tied to an nanogenerator abstract since 2008. I guess these guys from Princeton are now at the forefront..

Seems they have moved away from zinc oxide and barium titanate in favor of this PZT aka lead zirconate titanate...?