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Turn on Metal and they will boost their efficiency by 666%!

the title is at best misleading ... they add piezoelectrics into PV cells ... "manufacturing a piezoelectric material, zinc oxide nanorods, into the solar cells increased their efficiency when sound waves were played"

Harvesting vibrational energy?

A new experiment proved the existence of a new effect in nanomaterials: flexo-electric effect. The material has built-in mechanical tension that changes shape when you apply electrical voltage, or that generates electricity if you change its shape and was theorized some decades ago. Now, SrTiO3 allowed to observe this new effect, being comparable with piezoelectric effect.

My old twente university group! :)

Isn't muscle wire quite old technology though?

Hey guys, I thought I would forward you a link to a newsletter on Aerospace Tech. It is mainly on the engineering level - but after all that was an area where a lot of people in the team felt they missed expertise. So here you go! ;-) The newsletter is a mix of stories on new trends and of advertisement of high-tech parts by aerospace suppliers. IHS Global Spec also has similar newsletters on other research fields (e.g. piezoelectrics). Hope this is useful for some people.

Using dielectric materials as efficient EM radiators and receivers can scale down these antenna's to the chip level, reducing both weight and power consumption. The infamous internet-of-things one step closer. But could we also transmit power this way?? "In dielectric aerials, the medium has high permittivity, meaning that the velocity of the radio wave decreases as it enters the medium," said Dr Dhiraj Sinha, the paper's lead author. "What hasn't been known is how the dielectric medium results in emission of electromagnetic waves. This mystery has puzzled scientists and engineers for more than 60 years." The researchers determined that the reason for this phenomenon is due to symmetry breaking of the electric field associated with the electron acceleration The researchers found that by subjecting the piezoelectric thin films to an asymmetric excitation, the symmetry of the system is similarly broken, resulting in a corresponding symmetry breaking of the electric field, and the generation of electromagnetic radiation.

additional information: http://atelierdna.com/?p=144

isn't this a bit of a contradiction: on the one hand: "Based on rough estimates, said Núñez-Ameni the output would be comparable to that of a conventional wind farm covering the same area" and on the other: "After completion, a Windstalk should be able to produce as much electricity as a single wind turbine, with the advantage that output could be increased with a denser array of stalks. Density is not possible with conventional turbines, which need to be spaced about three times the rotor's diameter in order to avoid air turbulence. " still, very interesting concept!