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Hamster Power: The next cleantech movement?
Will hamsters spawn the next cleantech movement?
As reported in this week’s Technology Review, a research team led by Zhong Lin Wang of materials science and engineering at Georgia Tech have developed for the first time a nanogenerator that can be driven by irregular, low-energy biomotion, including the tapping of a human finger and a hamster’s erratic running and scratching.
From the article:
Other researchers have developed piezoelectric cantilevers that can also harvest biomechanical energy, but these systems rely on regular mechanical resonance at a specific frequency. Most biomotion–stretching muscles, swinging arms, walking, even the beating of a heart–produces mechanical energy that’s more irregular. Wang says that his group has made the first generator that can truly harvest small, irregular motions.
A video of the technology can be found here.
The first obvious application of this technology would be nanoscale devices such as implanted sensors.
The next obvious application: Matrix-like human energy factories.
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Kevin Downing @ MaRS
Kevin currently manages initial client engagements with the MaRS Venture Group. He also administers a federal fund that provides mentorship to start-up companies across Ontario.
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