When walked on, these wooden floors harvest enough energy to turn on a lightbulb

Researchers from Switzerland are tapping into an unexpected energy source right under our feet: wooden floorings. Their nanogenerator, presented in the journal Matter, enables wood to generate energy from our footfalls. They also improved the wood used in the their nanogenerator with a combination of a silicone coating and embedded nanocrystals, resulting in a device that was 80 times more efficient—enough to power LED lightbulbs and small electronics.

Credit: Sun et al./Matter

Research paper: Functionalized wood with tunable tribopolarity for efficient triboelectric nanogenerators https://www.cell.com/matter/fulltext/S2590-2385(21)00393-3

News Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/926516

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