> “The power generated by the flexible thermoelectric film we have created would not be enough to charge a smartphone but should be enough to keep a smartwatch going,” said Zhi-Gang Chen
> The generator achieved a power output of 1.2 milliwatts per square centimeter
An Apple Watch has a battery of about 1Wh and lasts, optimistically, 25 hours, making its average power usage 40 mW. So, that would require 40/1.2 = 33 cm² of wristband.
⇒ it looks like that claim may be a tad optimistic, but certainly in the right ballpark.
My RSS reader YOShInOn learned that I am interested in "energy harvesting" systems as much as I am interested in sustainable answers for the global energy problem. So it shows me a lot of articles that I often post.
These "energy harvesting" systems harvest a tiny amount of energy but for some applications that are parsimonious they can be more than enough.
I had a friend 20 years ago who was more than a little bit crazy (lost his child over it) who would challenge me with ideas for perpetual motion machines. Trained as a physicist my first instinct was "that violates conservation of energy" but I learned how to formulate anything like that in terms of forces so I could show why things wouldn't work without starting from that postulate.
He was really into thermoelectrics and with a cond-mat background I got pretty fascinated with them and learned that there was a huge room to grow so long as we could find materials with a better ratio of (electrical conductivity)/(thermal conductivity) and I'm still excited to read about developments in that field today.
> “The power generated by the flexible thermoelectric film we have created would not be enough to charge a smartphone but should be enough to keep a smartwatch going,” said Zhi-Gang Chen
> The generator achieved a power output of 1.2 milliwatts per square centimeter
An Apple Watch has a battery of about 1Wh and lasts, optimistically, 25 hours, making its average power usage 40 mW. So, that would require 40/1.2 = 33 cm² of wristband.
⇒ it looks like that claim may be a tad optimistic, but certainly in the right ballpark.
My RSS reader YOShInOn learned that I am interested in "energy harvesting" systems as much as I am interested in sustainable answers for the global energy problem. So it shows me a lot of articles that I often post.
These "energy harvesting" systems harvest a tiny amount of energy but for some applications that are parsimonious they can be more than enough.
I had a friend 20 years ago who was more than a little bit crazy (lost his child over it) who would challenge me with ideas for perpetual motion machines. Trained as a physicist my first instinct was "that violates conservation of energy" but I learned how to formulate anything like that in terms of forces so I could show why things wouldn't work without starting from that postulate.
He was really into thermoelectrics and with a cond-mat background I got pretty fascinated with them and learned that there was a huge room to grow so long as we could find materials with a better ratio of (electrical conductivity)/(thermal conductivity) and I'm still excited to read about developments in that field today.