Piezoelectric energy harvesters are typically vibrating cantilevers, covered with a piezoelectric layer that converts mechanical strain to an electrical charge to power devices. Most developers cover the entire length of the cantilever with piezoelectric material in an attempt to maximise the conversion efficiency.

In the magnetic levitation train example, conventional electromagnets could be supplemented by a metamaterial, which would have been designed to produce significantly higher intensities of magnetic fields using the same amount of electricity.

The technologies Logan refers to are microbial fuel cells (MFC)- which use wastewater and naturally occurring bacteria to produce electricity - and reverse electrodialysis (RED) - which produces electricity directly from the salinity gradient between salty and fresh water. The combined technology creates a microbial reverse-electrodialysis cell (MRC).

Printing specially engineered nanostructures on solar cells allows them to reach as high as 70 percent efficiency.

The latest Beetle might be 'more power, less flower', but that doesn't mean that it's anything other than environmentally conscientious, and that's especially the case with the E-Bugster concept, which is powered purely by electricity.

Microbial Fuel Cells, which work in a similar way to a battery, use bacteria to convert organic compounds directly into electricity by a process known as bio-catalytic oxidation.

This unprecedented atomic accuracy may yield the elementary building block for a future quantum computer with unparalleled computational efficiency.

Sodium-based batteries are particularly attractive: Sodium is a cheap, nontoxic, and abundant element that is uniformly distributed around the world and therefore would be ideal as a transport ion for rechargeable batteries.

A technique for creating a new molecule that structurally and chemically replicates the active part of the widely used industrial catalyst molybdenite has been developed by researchers with the U.S.

MIT team uncovers a reason why the hottest new material for rechargeable batteries works so well.

Typically, a solar cell generates a single electron for each photon captured. However, by adding pentacene, an organic semiconductor, the solar cells can generate two electrons for every photon from the blue light spectrum. This could enable the cells to capture 44% of the incoming solar energy.

The catalysts would enable the production of hydrogen from liquid fuel stored in a disposable or recycled cartridge, creating miniature fuel cells to power everything from mobile phones to laptops.

"That discovery would revolutionize technology," Norman said. "We'd get much improved electronics, power lines, even electric motors-our best engines are less than 50 percent efficient because so much energy is lost as heat.

Because the nanotubes have a large surface area , great amounts of energy could be stored in the aerogel, increasing the capacity of lithium batteries or supercapacitors used to store energy generated from renewable resources such as wind and the sun.

The new device developed by the research team achieved impressive practical results, capable of symmetrical bit writing with a resistance ratio between the two resistance states of over 500% and reproducible nonvolatile switching over 100,000 cycles.

The durable and relatively easy-to-produce material has innumerable applications, including recycling waste heat from industrial refineries or using auto exhaust heat to help recharge the battery in an electric car.

The new device would also allow "power proportional computing." For example, Web server farms, such as those used by Google, consume an enormous amount of power - even when there are low levels of user activity - in part because the server farms can't turn off the power without affecting their main memory.

Superconductivity describes the phenomenon where an electric current is able to travel through a material without any resistance - the material is a perfect electrical conductor without any energy loss.

There are differences between the group's demonstrations. For crystals, Tittel's group used thulium-doped lithium niobate, whereas Gisin's group opted for neodymium-doped yttrium silicate. In addition, a different type of laser set-up has favoured Gisin's group, which reports a maximum storage time of some 200 ns at an efficiency of more than 20%; Tittel's group reports a storage time of 7 ns at an efficiency of 2%. On the other hand, the quantum memory of Tittel's group functions at a bandwidth of 5 GHz - some 40 times greater than Gisin's group - which means, potentially, far more information could be sent in the same time.

The layout of the interior spaces and the distribution of opaque and glazed cladding surfaces are optimized for minimal energy loss, maximum natural daylighting, and selective solar gain. This energy optimization combined with extensive building integration of photovoltaic and solar thermal systems allow the house to produce a net annual surplus of energy, more than is needed to supply the house and its electric vehicles.