Daniel BuenoRecharge your phone without wires and outlets. The dream of many users has become real, at least in laboratories at the Universities of Wisconsin-Madison and Minnesota Duluth, in the United States, and Sun Yat-Sem University in China. The team incorporated a layer of nanogenerators into a smartphone. They are able to capture the vibrations of a surface, such as from the seat of a car in motion, and convert them into electricity. Called a mesoporous piezoelectric nanogenerator, the novelty was described in an article in the journal Advanced Materials (January 27, 2014). It is piezoelectric because it generates electricity through mechanical forces and mesoporous because of the material’s pores that absorb vibrations more efficiently. The nanogenerator is in the form of a transparent film. It is applied to the back cover of the device and produces energy to power the batteries.
