Latest Piezoelectricity Stories

If wind turbines clatter and whistle too loudly, they are only permitted to operate under partial load to protect the local residents "“ but this also means a lower electricity output. An active damping system cancels out the noise by producing counter-vibrations.If wind energy converters are located anywhere near a residential area, they must never become too noisy even in high winds. Most such power units try to go easy on their neighbors' ears, but even the most careful design cannot...

Using a laser and a device that converts reflected light into sound, researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory can detect explosives at distances exceeding 20 yards.The method is a variation of photoacoustic spectroscopy but overcomes a number of problems associated with this technique originally demonstrated by Alexander Graham Bell in the late 1880s. Most notably, ORNL researchers are able to probe and identify materials in open air instead of having to...

The promise of piezoelectric fiber pairsNanotechnology researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are developing a shirt that harvests energy from the wearer's physical motion and converts it into electricity for powering small electronic devices worn by soldiers in the field, hikers and other users. The research, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and described in the Feb. 14 issue of Nature, details how pairs of textile fibers covered with zinc oxide nanowires generate...

Scientists at the atomic energy commission (CEA) in Grenoble, France, have developed a technique that takes the mechanical force produced by falling raindrops and converts this force into electricity that can be used to power various electronic devices and sensors.  The system uses piezoelectric structures, which convert mechanical force to voltage, and can recover up to 12 milliwatts of power  from one of the larger "downpour" raindrops. "We thought of raindrops because they are one of...

German student Nicole Schmiedel has come up with a design for a trendy-looking wristwatch that contains an innovative ultra-light insulin pump to help people with type 1 diabetes. The watch produces its own electricity thanks to the use of piezo-electric technology originally developed for European satellites.A prototype of the novel insulin pump wristwatch named COR won one of the three Design and Technology Student Awards at this year's MATERIALICA trade fair in Munich. It was presented for...

Using a new precision bonding process they developed, Penn State researchers have designed and fabricated tiny new piezoelectric microactuators -- the largest only a hair's breadth wide -- based on coupling commercially available materials with existing micromachining technology. The new actuators promise to be low cost, and capable of providing controlled force, high resolution and large displacements appropriate for applications in RF switches for cell phones, for example, or optical...

Reaction Can Occur in Microseconds on Surfaces as Small as MicrochipsCOLUMBIA, Mo. ­-- Countries across the world continue to search for new ways to create energy. As our current means for energy continue to deplete, thus making them more expensive to generate, governments are searching for new energy resources. Researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia have developed a more efficient source of energy involving nano-scale particles that take only microseconds to create and can be...