Engineers tap into good vibrations to power the Internet of Things

May 3, 2023 New material converts vibrations into electricity  In a world hungry for clean energy, engineers have created a new material that converts the simple mechanical vibrations all around us into electricity to power sensors in everything from pacemakers to spacecraft. The first of its kind and the product of a decade of work by researchers at the University of Waterloo and the University of Toronto, the novel generating system is compact, reliable, low-cost and very, very green. "Our breakthrough will have a significant social and economic impact by reducing our reliance on non-renewable power sources," said Asif Khan, a Waterloo researcher and co-author of a new study on the project. "We need these energy-generating materials more critically at this moment than at any other time in history." The system Khan and his colleagues developed is based on the piezoelectric effect, which generates an electrical current by applying pressure - mechanical vibrations are one example - to an appropriate substance. The effect was discovered in 1880, and since then, a limited number of piezoelectric materials, such as quartz and Rochelle salts, have been used in technologies ranging from sonar and ultrasonic imaging to microwave devices. The problem is that until now, traditional piezoelectric materials used in commercial devices have had limited capacity for generating electricity. They also often use lead, which Khan describes as "detrimental to the environment and human health." The researchers solved both problems.