Voltage from wood
Researchers around D-BAUG professor Ingo Burgert have chemically modified wood and made it more compressible, turning it into a mini-generator. When compressed, it generates an electrical voltage. Such wood could serve as a biosensor or as a building material that harvests energy.
As Ingo Burgert and his research team "Wood Materials Science" have proven time and again: wood is so much more than just a building material. Now, together with the Empa research group led by Francis Schwarze, the team has used one chemical and one biological process to generate electrical voltage from a type of wood sponge. In doing so, they amplify what is known as the “piezoelectric effect” of wood.
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Reference:
Sun J, Guo H, Schädli GN, Tu K, Schär S, Schwarze F, Panzarasa G, Ribera J, Burgert I. external pageEnhanced mechanical energy conversion with selectively decayed woodcall_made, Science Advances (2021), doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abd9138
Learn more about the research group "Wood Materials Science" led by Professor Ingo Burgert