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A self-powered sensor made from plants

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The story of Qi Chen's research is full of serendipity. In the first year of her Ph.D., she was hanging out with friends at the University's Zernike campus, discussing the topics of their research. Chen told them she was going to study foam-like materials. A friend was casually peeling the stem of a grass-like plant, thereby revealing its insides that appeared to have an open and airy structure. He suggested jokingly that Chen might want to study it. She put it in her backpack and then forgot all about it.

Nearly two years later, Chen found the plant again in her backpack. She had been trying to induce electricity from bacteria, using foamy materials as an environment for them to live in. The results weren't promising, so she decided to have a closer look at this grass-like plant: a common wetland weed called soft rush ."The structure of the soft rush stem consists of layers of interconnected stars, a bit like tiny snowflakes," Chen explains.

Together with colleagues Wenjian Li and Feng Yan, Chen built a nanogenerator the size of a postage stamp, about one millimeter thick. It works as a motion sensor, co-author Dina Maniar explains,"You can put it in your shoe and when you walk, jump, or run, it releases a distinct signal that we can recognize."

 

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