Monday 9 May 2011

Soon You Voice May Be Charging You Phone!

The scientist, Sang-Woo Kim, has been working on converting sound into electricity, allowing the cellphone users' voices to charge their devices' batteries while they're talking,
A prototype device he used generated 50 millivolts of electricity from about 100 decibels of sound.


  The device uses tiny strands of zinc oxide placed between two electrodes, with a sound-absorbing pad on the top. The pad vibrates and moves when it's hit by sound waves,which squishes  the zinc oxide strands. The strands then spring back.
It's that movement that generates an electrical current.
Apparently, 100 decibels of sound generated 50 millivolts of electricity. One millivolt is a thousandth of a volt.


Why zinc oxide? It's a wide-band gap semiconductor.
Semiconductors have smaller band gaps than insulators. They conduct electricity at room temperature.
A band gap, also called an "energy gap," is an energy range in a solid where no electron states can exist. It generally refers to the energy difference between the top of the valence band and the bottom of the conduction band in insulators and semiconductors.


While it will be a while before it can power a phone. still a cool concept.

18 comments:

Vav said...

That is a crazy concept. Never thought of it before but sound DOES generate energy and we always just take it for granted!

Ox Mann said...

So once this is perfected, people will be yacking into their phones 24/7 whether their talking to someone or not.

BluRayBoy said...

Woah...

NruaGuitar said...

surely energy form walking would charge the battery better, cool stuff anyway

Xenototh said...

Well, functional technologies have to start somewhere. When I am about to kick it, phones won't need battery charging any more. :P

Anonymous said...

Soon we won't need any power cords for anything hehe

Thatguyheis said...

doesn't sound like it will be much power for a few years ;P

Common said...

Oh, like the conductive current generation used by the passive RFID tags?

JayPower said...

This is amazing, if they can put this into use on mobiles then the sky truly is the limit!! ;D

Fwission said...

Don't think you will ever gain battery power while talking but phones may use less battery when talking

Nicolas Cage said...

this sounds interesting

christopherson said...

i wish there was a link so i could post this on facebook. this is news.

Najal Sama said...

So cool

Samuel Jackson said...

This looks so cool!

Spock said...

Looks cool!

fit4life said...

that's a really great and innovative idea!

the.bishop said...

hahaha this is awesome josh...every company is coming up with a self recovering product it seems these days! they're even trying to charge hybrid cars from the shock movement. I think i'm gonna post something on it. Check it out.

David

Beer Blog Barry said...

Wow, so much easier than using solar powered chargers or other clunky chargers