Soon, everyday devices like your mouse and keyboard will be able to scavenge and regenerate their own energy. On June 7, MIT engineers have taken another step toward eliminating the need for wires with a new way of generating energy.
This new method uses carbon nanotubes that efficiently steal electrons from surrounding polymers. The technology comes after a previous carbon nanotube study by MIT’s Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering Michael Strano. In 2010, Prof. Strano proved that thermopower current—or heat pulses that produce energy—could be generated by burning fuel-coated carbon nanotubes.
Now, Prof. Strano and his team have furthered the research, and it looks promising. However, this time, the nanotubes were ground up and turned into particle sheets covered in a Teflon-like polymer coating for asymmetry. They were then trimmed to the necessary size and submerged in an electron-hungry organic solution (like acetonitrile). Once that was completed, the energy scavenging began.
Prof. Strano commented:
This technology is intriguing; because all you have to do is flow a solvent through a bed of these particles. This allows you to do electrochemistry, but with no wires.
At the moment, the process can only generate 0.7 volts of electricity per particle, so there’s plenty of work to conduct before your devices are developing their own energy. In the meantime, Professor Strano will be using carbon dioxide as a building material to regenerate the necessary polymer coating via a solar-powered process similar to photosynthesis.
This ground-breaking method of generating energy will be invaluable to the chemical industry and power tiny nano- and micro-bots. Years from now, we might cringe at the thought of our wire-cluttered desks as we effortlessly hold our mouse out of the window for a recharge.
