Tiny technologies could produce big energy solutions

Forgot to charge your cell phone last night? Imagine that you could power it by walking. Weirder still, you might be able to just spray a new battery on.

These concepts are being developed by two leading nanotechnology researchers who are developing cleaner, more efficient ways of delivering electrical power. In working toward making these ideas realities, they are making use of structures that are 100 nanometers or smaller, where one nanometer is a billionth of a meter.
“[The nanoscale] can make the components small, sensitive and high-performance,” said Zhong Lin “Z.L.” Wang, distinguished professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s College of Engineering. “The toughness and the flexibility increase by orders of magnitude.”

Wang and colleagues are working on harnessing the energy of the body’s natural movements to power small devices. Even the simple act of moving your fingers while typing creates energy that could power a small device, and these researchers are showing that nanotechnology can enable this transformation.

CNN