You may not have heard of piezoelectric materials, but odds are, you have benefitted from them.
Piezoelectric materials are solid materials —like crystals, bone or proteins—that produce an electric current when they are placed under mechanical stress.
Materials that harvest energy from their surroundings (through light, heat and motion) are finding their way into solar cells, wearable and implantable electronics and even onto spacecraft. They let us keep devices charged for longer, maybe even forever, without the need to connect them to a power supply.
Leave a reply