Georgia Institute of Technology Strategic Energy Institute | Georgia Institute of Technology | Atlanta, GA

Mobile phones, computers, and PDAs have become so much a part of our everyday lives. Small sensors and electronic devices such as these may soon power themselves not from batteries, generators or power lines but by harvesting energy such as light, heat or mechanical vibrations from the environment. Utilizing nanostructures smaller than the wavelength of visible light, Georgia Tech researchers are capturing and converting energy from the environment into an electrical current that can be used to power a wide range of electronics from cell phones to implantable medical instrumentation devices.