Micro-Windmills to Power Wearable Electronics?
Nano-windmills will charge our cell phones in the future. This is what scientists at the University of Texas at Arlington stated at the beginning of this year. J.-C. Chiao and Smitha Rao developed a small device that is just 1.8 mm at its widest point. It is calculated that 9 more of the same devices could be attached to a grain of rice. Yes, a total of 10 windmills could be gathered onto a single rice grain. And hundreds could be arranged onto an area of a cell phone battery. Wind could be created by waving the phone, or in the lazy way – by placing it at the window on a windy day.
Smitha Rao works in the field of micro-robotics for a long time
ago which caused an interest from a Taiwanese company in having Rao and Chiao
developments about device designs and applications for the fabrication process
of the company’s production line.
This company is WinMEMS Technologies
Co, which was firstly impressed by Rao’s 3D mechanical structures
able to assemble themselves from 2D metal pieces by using planar multilayer
electroplating techniques.
“The company was quite surprised with the
micro-windmill idea when we showed the demo video of working devices,” Rao said.
“It was something completely out of the blue for them and their
investors.”
Chiao added: “The micro-windmills work well because the metal
alloy is flexible and Smitha’s design follows minimalism for
functionality.”
The Taiwanese company and UT Arlington had
to reach an agreement about the developments due to the big interest
from WinMEMS. And it was reached: UT
Arlington will own the intellectual properties of the developments,
and the company will investigate the commercial potential.
A lot of UT
Arlington’s works were advertised by WinMEMS on their website and in many public
presentations. Except the windmills, subjects of this advertising were also
different inductors, gears, pop-up switches and grippers. Similar feature for
all of these devices is that they’re thinner than a human hair. These things
could be used in the future as components of nano-robots with various
applications and for tools for manufacturing micro-machines.
Smitha Rao
earned her Ph.D in 2009 at UT Arlington. She said: “It’s very gratifying to
first be noticed by an international company and second to work on something
like this where you can see immediately how it might be used. However, I think
we’ve only scratched the surface on how these micro-windmills might be
used.”
Rao stated that her windmills are extremely strong and reliable
because of the nickel alloy they’re made of, and also because of their special
aerodynamic shape. The devices were tested in September, 2013 and operated
successfully even under strong artificial winds.
“The problem most MEMS designers have is that materials are too brittle,” Rao
said. “With the nickel alloy, we don’t have that same issue. They’re very, very
durable.”
According to UT Arlington, the cost for manufacturing one windmill
is the same as the cost of producing hundreds or even thousands on a single
wafer, which promises the production of inexpensive systems.
- See more at: http://interestingengineering.com/micro-windmills-to-power-wearable-electronics/#sthash.y0GCnGom.dpuf
