How many times have you been left stranded in the middle of nowhere when your top of the line gizmo went limp as soon as the battery dried up? We have had groundbreaking developments on almost all fronts except that ubiquitous little black cylinder called the battery. While cell phones have evolved from specimens having a single line display that only displayed the caller’s number, to the stage where you watch You tube videos on the iPhone, batteries have remained more or less the same. So, what do we do to in a situation where you have squeezed out every ounce of battery life and there is no charger in sight? You take out your cellphone out of the pocket! That’s it!
Sounds far fetched? Could be – however, if researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory (INL) are to be believed, a new, special kind of flexible solar cell is under development which can collect and store energy from various sources – sources like the sun, light from a bulb. Infact, every potential energy consumer is a source of energy for the nano antennae. This microscopic antenna has been designed to capture energy left behind by existing processes and targets a certain wavelength range of mid-infrared rays. These rays are constantly emitted by the earth, thanks to the solar energy absorbed by the earth during the daytime. Steven Novack, the lead member of the team behind this initiative says "Every process in our industrial world creates waste heat. It's energy that we just throw away."
The most important fact to notice here is the anytime availability of this “waste” energy. It does not matter if its day or night, this leftover energy is always around us. The researchers have also found a way to mass-produce these nanoantennae skins on a flexible sheet of plastic. Say, if you have a coating of these cells on your cell phone, the moment you take it out of your pocket, it can be potentially charged!
Apart from helping you charge your gadgets, these nano antennae have another possible usage. Cooling! These antennae has the capability to absorb the infra red radiation and re-emit them at a harmless wavelength which sort of cools things down. This technology Can be used to cool PC components that require active cooling.
The INL foresees a future where we will have cars and electronic goods covered with the skin. However, obstacles remain. The main obstacle here is to convert the alternating current to DC current. The device produces alternate currents –but it alternates at trillions of times a second –making it impossible for modern rectifiers to detect it –let alone convert. Additionally, they will need to mass produce nano sized rectifiers, which is not possible on a large scale with existing technology.
Source: Dailytech
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