cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/18426215
Once its implementation is feasible and it can extract the waste energy efficiently, this innovation will enable new types of devices and uses that will be critical for commercial, scientific, medical and personal.
Sounds like it’s still more theoretical than realized, at this point. Still, I can’t help thinking this would be really cool for something like a watch or hearing aids.
It’s realized, just not scaled.
I was a little careless with how I phrased that. They said in the article they’ve done it, but it’s not “realized” in the sense that it’s not to a level of practicality that they’d want it to be. It can currently harvest signals to -20dBm, but they think they can get that to -62dBm for greater efficiency.
The main hurdle, according to them, is there’s no schottky diode that fits their needs, and they’ll have to engineer a new variant (at the nano scale…?). So, still a theoretical possibility on a more practical level, but this is hopeful news nonetheless.
Without tracking: https://youtu.be/_pm2tLN6KOQ
Still, I can’t help thinking this would be really cool for something like a watch
Watches have been solved. You put a solar panel in the watch face. No need for anything more.
Smart watches use too much energy to do any remote powering with at all, short of qi charging/other near-touching power distribution.
