Engineers develop device that generates electricity out of thin air, sunlight

Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created a device that can generate electricity out of what appears to be nothing but air.

The device doesn’t require sunlight, batteries or depend on wind, instead it relies on temperature fluctuations to generate energy. Called thermal resonator, the device was created using a combination of carefully customized materials.

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“We basically invented this concept out of whole cloth,” Michael Strano, a professor of chemical engineering at MIT, said in a statement. “We’ve built the first thermal resonator. It’s something that can sit on a desk and generate energy out of what seems like nothing. We are surrounded by temperature fluctuations of all different frequencies all of the time. These are an untapped source of energy.”

The material for such a system needs to be effective for a little-known characteristic called thermal effusivity – which describes how quickly the material can capture heat from its surroundings or release it to generate power.

Thermal effusivity is the combination of thermal conduction and thermal capacity. While the former refers to how quickly heat can be distributed through the material, the latter refers to how much heat can be stored.




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