A Waterloo Engineering research team has developed a new technology that can generate sustainable, clean energy from vibrations and even small body movements.
This innovative research, supervised by Dr. Dayan Ban, a professor at the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, means you could charge your laptop by typing or power your smartphone’s battery on your morning run.
“This is a real game changer,” said Dr. Asif Khan, the project’s lead researcher and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Waterloo. “We have made the first device of its kind that can power electronics at low cost and with unprecedented efficiency."
The device uses the piezoelectric effect, which generates electrical energy by applying pressure to materials like crystal and certain ceramics. Piezoelectric materials are currently used in various sensing technologies including sonar, ultrasonic imaging and microwave devices.
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