Origami-Folded Hydrogel Paper Instantly Generates 110 Volts of Electricity
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
I can see things like that appearing in mainstream media, but reading that from the IEEE is... disappointing.
Also, I wonder if the coloring of the dots is simply to keep track of which type each is.
> The handle contains a battery-powered high-voltage generator. The circuit is composed of an electronic oscillator, a step-up transformer and a voltage multiplier, [...] A capacitor attached to the electrodes discharges during the spark, and this initial discharge usually stuns or kills the fly.
Follow the links in Wikipedia to understand how each step works.
This paper device use a chain of small drops that have different chemical composition that produce a small voltage. Using a chain of them they get a high voltage.
The insect zapper use only one or two batteries (that are chemical cells) to produce 1.5V or 3V and the use a complex electric circuit to produce the high voltage.
(There is some ladder of capacitor in the voltage multiplier that are slightly similar to the chemical cells in the paper device, but I think they have more differences than similarities.)
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%87%E3%83%B3%E3%82%AD%E3...
Skip to 1:40 if you just want to hear the song.
If you can't appreciate her...
I think your real question is, how many Coulombs. Because it isn't very much energy to transfer 100 Amps for a femtosecond.
----------
Overall, they need to say how many Watts does it generate. There are multiple circuits to arbitrarily convert voltage into current and vice versa. The real difficult part is creating a sustainable source power.
---------
Now that I think of it, a mechanical paper "compression" that generates electricity would be a very interesting sensor. There are a lot of piezoelectric stuff out there already (crystals and buttons and stuff). But if there's a way to easily create a peizoelectric sensor from a 3d printer, that'd be good news.
Current / power isn't very important for sensor applications. (Detecting whether or not something is bending over or whatever)
> the current was still too low for most practical applications
"At the suggestion of a colleague, they tried connecting the gels through a Miura-ori fold, a type of origami fold that allows the gels to stack on a folded sheet. The gels connect simultaneously with a large contact area, more closely resembling the geometry of the eel’s cells. This method increased the current and prevented energy waste by decreasing the time it took for the gels to connect."
Current is important as much as voltage. A slipper and a carpet would generate thousands of Volts at very low current as well; by rubbing both feet on the carpet one would generate roughly twice the current, and a crowd doing the same would raise the current by orders of magnitude; still all that energy could not move a toy car by a single millimeter. That research is undoubtedly interesting, but it rather pertains to the "we're emulating how electric eels produce electricity" than the "we're solving the planet energy problems".
volts * amps * time = energy / work capacity
Silly mobile power bank makers.