Last updated April 12, 2019
The next time your cell phone battery needs a recharge, you may be able to give it one just with the touch of your hand. Researchers have come up with a way to transform the heat of your body into electricity, which means that your new or old cell phone need never go dead ever again.
Power Felt is able to keep a cell phone charged and ready to use for around 20 percent longer simply via the power of touch. Cell phone users can even ‘make the connection’ by sitting on their phone if they so wish, with their own body passing electricity to the device.
Professor David Carroll from the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials in the US at Wakeforest University has created the technology. He said that it might be just the first wave in a raft of cheaper methods by which electricity can be produced at a far more affordable price than current renewable energy technologies such as solar power, which are being held back from mainstream adoption due to the high costs involved. Power Felt is also very versatile and could be able to offer emergency electricity for a torch or radio, something that could make it invaluable during power cuts.
Carroll says that he started his experiments after discovering that electricity could not be conducted in the manner he wanted, which was both flexible and affordable via any naturally occurring material, and instead used nanotechnology.