Nobody likes driving on roads filled with potholes. Not only is it a huge pain to everyone on board, but it can also damage your car (and ruin people’s moods), especially on long drives. There’s nothing that can be done about car damage, but this concept might just change people’s perceptions towards potholes.
This wasn’t the goal of Dr. Xudong Wang from the University of Wisconsin when he teamed up with researchers researchers from Sun Yat-sen University in China. Rather, their goal was to come up with something that’ll make the most of all the bumps and humps, and they did so by developing a novel material that generates energy every time it’s jostled or moved.
The nanogenerator takes advantage of a common piezoelectric polymer material called polyvinylidene fluoride, or PVDF. Piezoelectric materials can generate electricity from a mechanical force. The researchers incorporated zinc oxide nanoparticles into a PVDF thin film to trigger formation of the piezoelectric phase that enables it to harvest vibration energy.
No timeframe yet for when this concept will actually be released commercially.
VIA [ Dvice ]
