Professor Michael C. McAlpine

The PhysOrg article Energy-harvesting rubber sheets could power pacemakers, mobile phones said

Power-generating rubber films developed by Princeton University engineers could harness natural body movements such as breathing and walking to power pacemakers, mobile phones and other electronic devices.
 
The material, composed of ceramic nanoribbons embedded onto silicone rubber sheets, generates electricity when flexed and is highly efficient at converting mechanical energy to electrical energy. Shoes made of the material may one day harvest the pounding of walking and running to power mobile electrical devices. Placed against the lungs, sheets of the material could use breathing motions to power pacemakers, obviating the current need for surgical replacement of the batteries which power the devices.
 
The Princeton team is the first to successfully combine silicone and nanoribbons of lead zirconate titanate (PZT), a ceramic material that is piezoelectric, meaning it generates an electrical voltage when pressure is applied to it. Of all piezoelectric materials, PZT is the most efficient, able to convert 80% of the mechanical energy applied to it into electrical energy. "PZT is 100 times more efficient than quartz, another piezoelectric material," said Michael McAlpine, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, at Princeton, who led the project. "You don't generate that much power from walking or breathing, so you want to harness it as efficiently as possible."

Michael C. McAlpine, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Princeton University. The focus of his research is in exploring nanotechnology-enabled approaches to addressing fundamental problems in medicine, energy, and flexible electronics.
 
Mike began his appointment as Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Princeton in 2008, and is an associated faculty member with the Princeton Department of Chemistry and the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials (PRISM).
 
He earned a B.S. with honors in Chemistry from Brown University in 2000, an M.A. in Chemistry from Harvard University in 2002, and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard University in 2006.
 
His dissertation work at Harvard under Professor Charles M. Lieber involved the development of integrated, high performance nanoelectronic systems on flexible plastic substrates.
 
His post-doctoral work at Caltech under Professor James R. Heath focused on nanotechnology-enabled hybrid sensors for medical applications.
 
His research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Nature, Nature Materials, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Nano Letters, and Proceedings of the IEEE.
 
Mike coauthored Scalable Interconnection and Integration of Nanowire Devices without Registration, High-Speed Integrated Nanowire Circuits, High-Performance Nanowire Electronics and Photonics on Glass and Plastic Substrates, Highly ordered nanowire arrays on plastic substrates for ultrasensitive flexible chemical sensors, Nanoimprint lithography for hybrid plastic electronics harvard.edu, Si/a-Si core/shell nanowires as nonvolatile crossbar switches, and Peptide—Nanowire Hybrid Materials for Selective Sensing of Small Molecules.
 
Mike has given talks at several universities and conferences, most notably an invitation to speak to the prestigious JASONs Defense Advisory Group.
 
He has received a number of awards, most prominently an Air Force Young Investigator Award, an Intelligence Community Young Investigator Award, and an American Asthma Foundation Early Excellence Award.
 
Read Harvard Scientists Create High-Speed Integrated Nanowire Circuits.