Harvesting energy from devices
If there’s one thing nearly all modern technology has in common, it’s heat. Whether it’s your car, computer, television, or even refrigerator, they all generate large amounts of heat. And nearly all of it goes to waste. In an effort to recapture some of that energy and transform it into electricity, a team of researchers has developed computer simulations for a new type of meta-material that would have the ability to control heat and electrical current independently. Their work is described in a recently published paper in Physical Review X. The team included Yuki Sato, a fellow at the Rowland Institute at Harvard, and Salvatore Savo, a postdoctoral fellow at the institute, along with Massimo Moccia, Giuseppe Castaldi, and Vincenzo Galdi at the University of Sannio in Italy. “No one has ever been able to show an example where electrical current and heat can be independently controlled,” Savo said. “This is really proof...