In case you are of those people who came across situation; rushing off to an important meeting, time is running out, you cant remember the address and then you realize that you left your client’s name card at the office. You pick up your mobile phone and try dialing your office number, half way listening to the dialing tone, the battery dies off. You pull the battery out and put that in again hoping for a miracle. Well, at that moment you wish that you have a new battery in hand or even charge the battery with your bare hand!

Wish no more because this will soon be a reality.

Scientists are developing a new device that converts wasted heat into electricity. This could have a profound impact on global energy supplies on almost everything from a light bulb to mobile phones.

Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, have found a way to convert heat into electricity using ordinary silicon. Strange but true… The technique potentially brings about to the world, a greater height of environment care. With this technology, one could recycle not only glass or papers but also enormous amount of wasted energy. Hence, recharging your mobile phone with your own body heat could be possible.

Arun Majumdar Arun Majumdar, a mechanical engineer and materials scientist with joint appointments at the Berkeley lab and UC Berkeley claimed that the discovery was actually an accident. It was by luck that this discovery was made. But Majumdar was proud with this breakthrough and indeed excited.

What’s more surprising is actually the key to this discovery – an ordinary silicon that is treated like a trash in semiconductor industry, a material that almost no scientists in the right frame of mind would work on for this purpose.
Majumbar and his colleagues are not clear how the device they created actually works and couldnt figure out a reason behind this at the current point. But the researchers insist that the laboratory experiments show that it does work.

Although the result by far seems promising, getting the device to the market will involve a lot of challenges including the device performance and cost of production.

This breakthrough will definitely play a small part at least in curbing global warming and world’s energy problem.

Pic: ABCnews.com

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