Nokia develops technology to charge smartphone's battery with ambient noise

ByMauro Fuentes

Nokia collaborated with Dr. Joe Briscoe of Queen Mary University and Dr. Steve Dunn to successfully charge smartphones using everyday noises.

Lumia Devices are alive with the sound of music - Conversations
http://conversations.nokia.com/2014/07/10/lumia-devices-alive-sound-music/


The prototype of the technology that charges the battery of the smart phone by using noise is to make electricity by taking advantage of the property of the nano-sized material which is thousands of thousands of human hair. Characteristics may change when substances are decomposed to nano level, for example color may change, durability becomes high, chemical reactivity may be high. And Nokia researchers reveal that substances decomposed to the nano level make it easier to collect energy from movement and vibration, and wanted to establish a power generation method using this characteristic.


The nano-sized material used by Nokia in experiments is "zinc oxide", which has the property of converting mechanical energy and vibration into electric energy. Since almost nano-sized zinc oxide can be coated on almost everything, we applied this to a plastic film of the same size as Lumia 925, and when we actually generated surrounding noises to generate electricity, we generated a voltage of 5 V Succeeded.


Nokia has already devised a technology to coat nano-sized zinc oxide on plastic film and a method to use inexpensive aluminum foil instead of expensive gold as a contact part of electrode. In addition, when applying pressure to this coating, high voltage is generated, but pressure is OK with vibration etc. caused by motion other than sound.

ByArtur Luiz