Research report: Nanopants that might power an iPod
Ah, the promise of piezoelectric fiber pairs.
"Remarkable New Clothing May Someday Power Your iPod®," reads the headline of today's National Science Foundation press release, complete with the dutiful ® symbol that nobody outside Apple (AAPL) ever bothers to use.
The release describes nanotech clothing being designed at the Georgia Institute of Technology that converts the wearer's motion into electricity that can be used to power small electrical devices.
A report in the Feb. 14 issue of Nature explains how pairs of textile fibers covered with zinc oxide nanowires generate electricity in response to applied mechanical stress.
"The two fibers scrub together just like two bottle brushes with their bristles touching, and the piezoelectric-semiconductor process converts the mechanical motion into electrical energy," says Georgia Tech professor Zhong Lin Wang.
Wang and his collaborators have made more than 200 fiber nanogenerators so far and have measured as much as 4 nanoamperes and output voltage of about 4 millivolts from two 1-cm fibers. Wang estimates that a square meter of this fabric could generate as much as 80 milliwatts.
The one wrinkle in the technology (NSF's pun, not mine) is that zinc oxide is sensitive to moisture. You wouldn't throw your iPod in the washing machine, and your nanopants shouldn't go in there either.
The research was funded by NSF's Division of Materials Research and sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Emory-Georgia Tech Nanotechnology Center for Personalized and Predictive Oncology, of all people.
For more information, see the NSF release here.
The scanning electron microscope image is reposted courtesy of Z.L. Wang and X.D. Wang, Georgia Institute of Technology.
How is this news particular to "Apple" more so than any other personal device? It's not.
Although interesting this is simply fodder, I mean let's face it, you can't slam Apple every day without making it most obvious you're a hired institutional manipulator. This kind of meaningless fodder helps to legitimize your agnostic argument.
Do you realize that Mac sales being "flat sequentially" actually translates into huge upside for Apple? Their fiscal second quarter is usually down across the board which is why earnings are forecast down at the beginning of each year. Looks like that trend may be mitigated this year.
My daughter managed to put her iPod Shuffle in the washing machine – and after drying it up it worked perfectly again. Maybe the nano trousers will to…