Researchers use rubber material to power devices

Bangalore: Researchers from Princeton and Caltech have come up with a power-generating rubber material that could charge electronic devices by harnessing walking and other movement. The material is made from nanoribbons composed of lead zirconate titanate, or PZT, a ceramic substance that's "piezoelectric," meaning it generates an electrical voltage when pressure is applied, reports CNET News.

Do you think Americans are Workaholics?

	Yes
	No

   View result

The "piezo-rubber chips" are embedded in clear silicone rubber sheets that produce electricity when flexed. The scientists - who eloborated on their findings in the latest issue of Nano Letters, a journal of the American Chemical Society - say the rubber sheets could one day appear in shoes that power cell phones and other mobile electronic devices as the user walks or runs.

"The new electricity-harvesting devices could be implanted in the body to perpetually power medical devices, and the body wouldn't reject them," said Michael McAlpine, an Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace engineering at Princeton who led the project. The researchers say they are hopeful about their technique and they maintain that PZT is the most efficient of all piezoelectric materials, able to convert 80 percent of the mechanical energy applied to it into electrical energy. For their product, the PZT is made into nanoribbons so narrow that 100 fit side-by-side in the space of a millimeter.