Nanowire Harvests Free Energy?

 There’s no doubt nanotechnology is the future. Nano-sized machines assembled at the cellular level have the potential to increase efficiency, accomplish tasks previously thought impossible, and maybe even generate energy.

One of the problems with nanotechnology is a power source. Batteries do no work at that scale. Nano scientists have developed what’s called a “nanowire” to solve this problem. Made of a piezoelectric material, the nanowire is able to harvest mechanical energy. When deformed, voltage is produced. This can used to power nano machines.

Now I’m not an expert in nanotechnology, so forgive me if my interpretation is a bit naive. It seems to me that if this nanowire is capable of generating electricity, however small the voltage, it should be able to be multiplied enough to create something of use.

These nanowires create 0.3 attojoules (”less than one quintillionth of a joule”). Obviously we would need an incredible amount of these to create anything useful, but it seems to me that there is a potential that these nanowires, working in unison, could create usable electricity.

We just might be able to power your iPod by harvesting tiny amounts of mechanical energy.

Obviously this technology would be a long way off as nanowires are still a very young technology, but every day nanotech seems to change our views of how technology can work.

Could this be a future green power source? I invite anyone with nanotech experience to chime in on the subject, is it possible?

via ENN

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