The nanowires were bumping around inside the tube resulting in a small charge, and as the frequency of bumps rose, one end of the tube became differently charged from the other.
“So it’s really like a battery,” explained Yao. “You have a positive pull and a negative pull, and when you connect them the charge is going to flow.” Yao’s team conducted a new study that saw their experiments move on from nanowires, and instead use materials with millions of tiny holes, or nanopores. The result is a device the size of a thumbnail that can generate roughly one microwatt.
“The beauty is that the air is everywhere,” added Yao. “Even though a thin sheet of the device gives out a very tiny amount of electricity or power, in principle, we can stack multiple layers in vertical space to increase the power.”Now, other scientists are saying that these devices do have the potential of producing the miracle of generating electricity from thin air.
Others however say we still have a long way to go before these types of devices are powering our homes.Anna Korre, professor of environmental engineering at Imperial College London. “Sourcing raw materials, costing, assessing the environmental footprint, and scaling them up for implementation takes time and conviction.”“Lots of energy is stored in water molecules in the air,” he concluded“That’s where we get the lightning effect during a thunderstorm.
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