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Someday, you may be able power your electronics just by moving around. A new nanogenerator that acts like a second skin and harvests energy from human motions can easily generate enough power to light 20 small LEDs.
Ting Liu at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and her colleagues built a specialised material out of a layer of hydrogel sandwiched between a stretchy plastic material called elastomer, and then coated in silicone rubber to keep the hydrogel from drying out. The final bonded material is just under …