Self-Charging Battery Transforms Vibrations Directly Into Chemical Energy

A research team and the Georgia Institute of Technology has invented a lithium ion battery that charges itself by using the environment vibrations. Unlike...

Alternating Current from Friction With Triboelectric Nanogenerators

Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology have discovered a way to produce electricity from random mechanical motion using triboelectric nanogenerators. These are devices fabricated...

Nanocomposite Materials Make Up New Cheap Piezoelectric Harvester

A new large-area piezoelectric nanogenerator technology has been developed by a team of scientists at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. The...

Chinese Scientists Find Alternative to Lead-Containing Mainstream Piezoelectric Material

You probably learned in high school what the piezoelectric effect is: a phenomenon where an electromotive force is generated by applying mechanical stress to...

New Discovery Makes Piezoelectric Materials 25% More Efficient

A new project at National Physical Laboratory in the UK aims to develop a much more efficient piezoelectric energy harvester. They found a serious...

Pavegen's Tiles Harvest Kinetic Energy Every Time Users Step on Them

Kembell-Cook, the director of Pavegen Systems has come up with a new way to produce clean electricity from pedestrian traffic. The Pavegen tiles are...

New Piezoelectric Device Generates Energy From Human Respiration

Graduate Student Jian Shi and Engineering Assistant Professor Xudong Wang at the University of Wisconsin-Madison came up with a new device that is able...

Piezo-Photovoltaic Device Creates Electricity From Wind/Rain/Sun

A new device that harvests energy from raindrops, winds or sunlight has been invented at the Institute for Materials Research and Innovation at the University of Bolton, UK. Elias Siores led a team who created a special polymer with piezoelectric and photosensitive properties.

Yell at Your Phone to Charge It: New Piezoelectric Device Could Help You

Imagine that one day you could charge your mobile phone or other low-consumption devices just by placing them in noisy areas or by yelling at them. South-Korean scientists from the Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, are now studying a type of zinc oxide-based device that could do just that.

Highways in California Could Actually Produce Energy

When cars or trains move on the surface of the earth, they produce vibrations. These vibrations can be captured and directed through underground piezoelectric materials to a smart grid or roadside batteries.