Zhong Lin Wang and his team at the Georgia Institute of Technology have come up with a generator that powers your smartphone with nothing more than typing and swiping. The idea is based on the triboelectric effect, which produces an electric charge from the friction of two different materials rubbing together. It’s a breakthrough that has already been successfully incorporated into various objects, and could mean you never have to charge your phone again!

To increase the amount of friction, and therefore output, Wang and his team added microscopic patterns to specially-adapted sheets of polymer. The result is an energy-output device called a triboelectric nanogenerator, or TENG, that can produce enough power to illuminate 1000 LED bulbs with a single stamp of the foot.”The amount of charge transferred depends on surface properties,” explains Wang. “Making patterns of nanomaterials on the polymer films’ surfaces increases the contact area between the sheets and can make a 1000-fold difference in the power generated.”


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A Dutch start-up called Plant-e has developed a way to use living plants as a continuous source of clean energy – all that’s needed is a light source, carbon dioxide, water, and, of course, a field or patch of plants. The system works best in wetlands or watery fields like rice paddies, but it doesn’t matter if the water is brackish or polluted, so areas unsuitable for growing crops could be repurposed as a power source. There’s no complicated infrastructure to install, which makes it super easy to bring electricity to isolated regions that are currently without power.

The theory behind the Plant-e system is surprisingly simple. When plants create food using photosynthesis, a large portion of the organic matter generated is actually excreted by the roots into the soil. That organic matter gets munched on by microorganisms living in the soil, which release electrons as a byproduct of this consumption. By placing an electrode near the roots, it’s easy to harvest this waste energy and turn it into electricity.






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