Ultrathin Loudspeaker-Mic Also Generates Energy from Motion

Printed newspapers may be going out of style, but what if you could have a flexible electronic

paper that reads headlines or the weather report and skips to the sports section on voice command? Researchers at Michigan State University have developed a sheet-like device — known as a ferroelectret nanogenerator, or FENG — that acts as a loudspeaker and microphone and can generate energy from human motion, such as swiping a finger across a screen. [Top 10 Inventions that Changed the World] "It's a device that you can roll up and put in your pocket and then get somewhere and unroll and put it on a screen or a window or any platform and use it as a both a microphone and loudspeaker," said Nelson Sepulveda, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Michigan State University, and the primary investigator of the new study published online May 16 in the journal Nature Communications.        https://www.livescience.com/59160-ultrathin-loudspeaker-mic-generates-energy-from-motion.html