(June 30, 2015) A
group of University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers and a collaborator from
China have developed a nanogenerator that harvests energy from a car's rolling
tire friction.
An innovative method of reusing energy, the nanogenerator
ultimately could provide automobile manufacturers a new way to squeeze greater
efficiency out of their vehicles.
The researchers reported their development, which is the
first of its kind, in a paper published May 6, 2015, in the journal Nano
Energy.
Xudong Wang, the Harvey D. Spangler fellow and an associate
professor of materials science and engineering at UW-Madison, and his PhD
student Yanchao Mao have been working on this device for about a year.