* Astronomy

NEW MATERIAL COULD EFFICIENTLY POWER TINY GENERATORS
To power a very small device like a pacemaker or a transistor, you need an even smaller generator. The components that operate the generator are smaller yet, and the efficiency of those foundational components is critical to the performance of the overall device.
For his Ph.D. at the Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Wisconsin-Madison materials science and engineering assistant professor Xudong Wang was part of a team that developed a piezoelectric nanogenerator and experimented with a variety of materials to power it.
The team found that zinc oxide nanowires, which have six-sided, column-like crystals, could produce 10 nanowatts per square centimetre by converting mechanical energy into electricity. The mechanical energy could come from environmental sources as varied as wind, car engines, human breathing, blood flow, body movements, or acoustic and ultrasonic vibrations.

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