People eat sandwiches to give themselves energy. A new study explains how to get electricity from those sandwiches without going to the bother of eating them.
The study is: “Sandwich as a Triboelectric Nanogenerator,” Jingyi Jiao, Qixin Lu, Zhonglin Wang, Yong Qin, and Xia Cao, Nano Energy, vol. 79, no. 105411, September 2020. The authors, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Georgia Tech, and other institutions, report:
“For the past few years, triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have been demonstrated as an unprecedented method as self-powered, power generation and blue energy. The materials and electrodes used to fabricate TENGs are usually polymer materials and metals. The article demonstrates a new TENG that use entirely bio- and environmental degradable materials. The basic ingredients of the TENG are wheat bread and vegetable leaves for fabricating a sandwich structured TENG (S-TENG). The maximum voltage and current of this S-TENG can reach about 15 V and 3 μA, respectively, when it works in the single electrode mode under the optimal conditions.”