{"id":80938,"date":"2018-07-25T22:22:21","date_gmt":"2018-07-26T05:22:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/nanotech-powers-this-super-sensitive-microphone"},"modified":"2018-07-25T22:22:21","modified_gmt":"2018-07-26T05:22:21","slug":"nanotech-powers-this-super-sensitive-microphone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/nanotech-powers-this-super-sensitive-microphone","title":{"rendered":"Nanotech powers this super-sensitive microphone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/nanotech-powers-this-super-sensitive-microphone.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The trouble with microphones is that they don\u2019t just hear \u2014 they have to <em>listen<\/em>. Powering the mic and its signal processor means using energy, and energy means a battery, and a battery means charging. This new microphone-like system hears more like the way our own ears do, requiring little or no power, and could help fill the world with voice-responsive machines. (If that\u2019s something we really want.) <\/p>\n<p>The device is called a \u201ctriboelectric auditory sensor,\u201d and it works via what\u2019s called the triboelectric effect \u2014 essentially when two surfaces rub together and create a charge. They\u2019re still trying to figure out <em>why<\/em> this happens, but what matters to engineers is that it happens reliably.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nanoscience.gatech.edu\/paper\/2014\/14_FD_01.pdf\">Triboelectric nanogenerators<\/a> have been around for a few years, creating power by having two compatible materials interact with each other at super-small scales. While they\u2019re tiny and highly efficient, they don\u2019t actually produce a lot of power. <a href=\"http:\/\/robotics.sciencemag.org\/lookup\/doi\/10.1126\/scirobotics.aat2516\">Researchers from Chongqing University<\/a> found that, fortunately, you don\u2019t need a lot of power for the purposes of detecting sound.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2018\/07\/25\/nanotech-powers-this-super-sensitive-microphone\/\">https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2018\/07\/25\/nanotech-powers-this-super...icrophone\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The trouble with microphones is that they don\u2019t just hear \u2014 they have to listen. Powering the mic and its signal processor means using energy, and energy means a battery, and a battery means charging. This new microphone-like system hears more like the way our own ears do, requiring little or no power, and could [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-nanotechnology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80938\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}