Thanks to the mechanical devices which we increasingly charge with the burden not only of production but also of calculation, the quantity of
unused human energy is growing at a disturbing rate both within us and around us; and this phenomenon will reach its climax in the near future, when nuclear forces have been harnessed to useful work.
In a project funded by electronics giant Samsung, a team of Penn State materials scientists and electrical engineers has designed a mechanical
energy transducer based on flexible organic ionic diodes that points toward a new direction in scalable
energy harvesting of
unused mechanical
energy in the environment, including wind, ocean waves and
human motion.