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Loading...Tapping Touch Screens to Generate Energy
- Megan Zehnder
- April 30, 2010
- 2:32 pm
- 49 comments
Touch-screens are becoming ever-so-popular; people everywhere are tapping away on their smart phones, laptops, and iPads — and tapping frequently. So what if there were a way to capture the energy in all that tapping and use it to power the touch-screen device? Well researchers at Samsung and Sungkyunkwan are working on doing just that.
The researchers have combined flexible transparent electrodes with an energy-scavenging material. The resulting film-like substance can be printed over large areas and can potentially help power portable electronics.
The touch-screen display sensors that are commonly used today are rigid and power-consuming. Samsung’s team is trying to replace these with a flexible, self-powering sensor system. “The flexibility and rollability of the nano-generators gives us unique application areas such as wireless power sources for future foldable, stretchable, and wearable electronics systems,” says Sang-Woo Kim, professor of materials science and engineering at Sungkyunkwan University. Kim led the research with Jae-Young Choi, a researcher at Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology.
According to Technology Review, the power-generating touch screens are at least five years from the market. However some prototypes that have already been made can produce about a microwatt per square centimeter. Kim says this is enough for a self-powered touch sensor and “indicates we can realize self-powered flexible portable devices without any help of additional power sources such as batteries in the near future.”
Read more: Conscious Consumer, Do Good, News & Issues, clean tech, flexible, ipad, self-powering sensor system, touch screens
Megan Zehnder
Megan is an editor and producer for Care2's Healthy Living. Her main priorities are to live simply and build meaningful relationships with the people in her life. She loves to write and talk about environmental issues, healthy living, and women's rights. Beyond that, her interests change daily, but eating and cooking vegetarian food is always a favorite.
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may
not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.
people are talking
Thanks for sharing Shelley.
good reminder
Thank you, I'll be there!
cute. thanks for sharing
great
49 comments
+ add your ownInteresting! Thanks for the article.
interesting
Pretty innovative. Thanks Megan.
Thank you
Thanks for the article.
Let's not stop at floors and roadways, Jamie. What about runways - with the rolling of the planes before they take off.
And also in the rails that trains travel on.
That would be cool.
very interesting
cool :)
great idea. could we install them in the floors and roadways so that when we walk and drive we create energy LOL.
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