Originally published on The Nano Newswire
Engineers at the Institute of Nanotechnology at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul Korea are working on converting background noise, music and voice calls from a cell phone into electricity. This electricity can be used to charge the batteries of the cell phone leading to more noise, and more electricity to generate the noise.
A microphone uses piezoelectric concepts to accumulate electrical charge in solid materials in response to applied mechanical strain, such as that induced by acoustic vibrations. However, this innovation takes the concept one step further, in that the charge is used to charge batteries of devices, including those devices associated with the generation of the noise in the first place. An improvement viewed for the future is to modify the materials in the oxide wires with nanogenerators which would produce more electricity at lower sound levels.
We are looking forward to see if this can have an impact on energy production, as a substantial amount of electricity is consumed by battery chargers, particularly when the battery chargers are left plugged in for long periods, typically without a battery even being placed in them under charge. We might even expect pundits to make quips about harnessing the energy of chatter and creating perpetual motion machines.
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