Published January 30, 2019 This content is archived.
An article in UK-based magazine New Electronics reports on research by James Chen, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, that suggests that static electricity could be used to power electronics.
"Although this phenomena has been known for long time, we still do not know everything happening during the process, that is, what drives the charge move across the gap and accumulate on the surface? Each surface lattice at its perturbed state (after contact) in the materials forms a dipole. It is known that a dipole induces an external field affecting its surrounding materials. We hypothesise that this induced field is the driving force behind triboelectrification," says Chen.
