“To be frank, it was an accident. We were actually interested in making a simple sensor for humidity in the air. But for whatever reason, the student who was working on that forgot to plug in the power.”
– UMass Amherst professor of electrical and computer engineering
Jun Yao, on the discovery of
hygroelectricity—renewable power pulled from thin air. In a
new paper, Yao and team demonstrate the generation of a small but continuous electric current from atmospheric humidity, enough to light a single pixel on a large LED screen.
