When we talk about Disney, most of us would think of the company as one that operates the world’s happiest place, in addition to churning out plenty of cute cartoons along the way which have endeared themselves to the masses for many decades already. Well, they do have a stake in the world of technology, too, as we have seen in the middle of last month with the touch-powered sound transmitter, and this time around we are treated to the wonders of electricity generation using printable paper instead of regular batteries, now how about that?
The researchers who discovered a way to do this claim that the generator developed is able to create pieces of paper, that when manipulated in the right direction, is capable of generating enough juice so much so that it is capable of lighting up an LED and even to be able to turn on an eBook display. Researcher Ivan Poupyrev shared, “This simplicity leads to countless applications enabling interactivity everywhere and anytime. My overall goal is to make the whole world interactive, and creating ubiquitous power supplies is a key step in that direction.”
Just how does this paper work? It must use a material that is able to hold a “semi-permanent” electric charge, and one of the charge holding electrets happens to be Teflon. Whenever one rubs Teflon against an ordinary sheet of paper, it will create the opposite charge, so in this new material, both are manually rubbed together in order to generate and harness such energy.