Now do not imagine, because we can actually do that!
WE CAN CONVERT OUR STRESS INTO ELECTRICITY! Amazing right. Lets go deep.
Concepts of Physics Vol I & II with Solutions of both the Volumes - Set of 4 Books
The scientists has develop a new organic material that can turn stress into electricity. The team from Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, created- thin new substance. It's a rubbery material that generates electricity dependant upon movement of person. This flexible, organic, thin rubber material, properties that aren’t usually associated with power plants or sensors. But a new material developed by Empa researchers is exactly like that a thin, organic, flexible flim that can generate electricity when stretched and compressed. This rubber film could be incorporated into control buttons, clothing, robots or even people, and monitor activities, record touches or generate electricity when stressed to power implanted devices such as pacemakers, just as an example.
Physics behind its Working:
Here, the Piezoelectric Effect is employed. Piezoelectricity is the electric charge that accumulates in certain solid materials in response to applied mechanical stress. The word piezoelectricity means electricity resulting from pressure and latent heat. This concept might sound unfamiliar to many, but millions of people have seen the effect in practice.
For a long period of time, the piezoelectric effect was only known for crystals. As these are heavy and solid, the effect could only be used in certain limited applications. However, Empa researcher Dorina Opris and her colleagues have now succeeded in giving elastomers piezoelectric properties. Nevertheless, the new material is not easy to produce.
Preparation of the material:
The rubber is a composite material made of polar nanoparticles and an elastomer (silicone in the prototype). First of all, Yee Song Ko, a PhD student at Empa, has to shape those two materials before connecting them which yields a thin, elastic film, where the polar moieties of the nanoparticles are still randomly oriented.
In order to create a piezoelectric material, Song Ko has to introduce an internal polarization using a strong electrical field. To achieve this, the film is heated until the glass transition temperature of the nanoparticles has been exceeded and they change from a solid, glassy state into a rubbery, viscous one. Under these conditions, the polar moieties are oriented by the electrical field. The orientation achieved is eventually frozen by cooling the material to room temperature.
While the plastic-looking substance doesn't seem anything we've seen before with the effect, many other researchers praise it for pushing the limits of previous understanding of the piezoelectric effect. The biggest downside to this material? As with most other novel materials, it can be incredibly difficult to reproduce and upscale at a reasonable cost.
Future of Stress:
Ultimately, researchers hope that the material could be useful in every facet of life from robotics to clothing to medical technologies that people use to survive like a pacemaker. The material would allow pacemakers to power themselves without the need for invasive procedures to change the batteries.
This material could probably be used to obtain energy from the human body, we could implant it near the heart to generate electricity from the heartbeat, for instance.
Concepts of Physics Vol I & II with Solutions of both the Volumes - Set of 4 Books
One of the most exciting uses of this technology could be in the advancement of soft robotics and allowing robots to "feel" their surroundings. The material would be able to send impulses to the device for it to be "understood" by a robotic system.
However, it's not just the film that could be used to teach robots to feel pain. Researchers from Leibniz University of Hannover in Germany developed an artificial nervous system that programmed a robot with the "insights from human pain research."
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