Improving Nanogenerators

In Zhong Lin Wang's laboratory at Georgia Tech, a blinking LCD signals the success of a five-year effort to power conventional electronic devices using nanoscale generators that harvest mechanical energy from the environment.

Transcript

00:00:01 we look at Nano devices that can be utilized for Health Care environment monitoring personal electronics how do you power these devices is a critical issue by virtue of p Electric one-dimensional nanowires we've been able to fabricate nanogenerators which can convert tiny mechanical disturbance into electricity most recently we successfully boosted up the electric

00:00:28 output of the Nano generator by integrating a large number of nanowires together so that they can work in a simultaneous manner 1999 11 years ago I started with zinc oxide we were the first group in the world to do this research we use this material as a raw material then we make Nano structure out of it so we call Nano wires that means tiny little wires have a diameter of 100

00:00:54 to 300 nanometer have a length about 10 to 100 Micron let me give you idea how long is 100 Micron 100 Micron is two hair width in our lab we do from beginning to end from beginning we have material synthesis this includes physical vapor deposition chemical synthesis then to device fabrication to structure analysis to measurements to packaging we try cover the whole thing

00:01:26 using the Nano generator as a power source we successfully demonstrated powering conventional Electronics such light emitting diode laser diode and the liquid crystal display this is a major step that is likely to bring nanogenerator based self-powered technology into people's daily life we talk about tiny physical motion your heartbeating your muscle movement we

00:01:50 call irregular motion that's what we talk at we want to harvest irregular energy irregular motion IND the energy into electricity we use nanomaterials to do that from beginning to today we improve the power output billions of times and that's we've done that within last five years this the just a start as we can drive this small component we can drive small systems in near future so we

00:02:17 came a long way but step by step from science to engineering to technology and we hopefully to do commercialization in next few years